recipe addiction

[navlys]

I confess to being a recipe junkie. I have at least 10 filled recipe boxes, a basket full of copied recipes, a book of repeat recipes, saved recipes on allrecipes, king Arthur(of course), bh&g, epicurious, fine cooking, taste of home, pinterest, yummly, Pillsbury, Betty
Crocker....HELP!!!!!! Oh and several cookbooks.

When I went online to see if there were any ideas on how to quit this addiction, I found more recipe sites!

Spread the word

      

  

  

[BakerAunt]

Navylys--Once you are addicted to recipes, you cannot become unaddicted. The internet, as with many addictions, has only multiplied the problem. Here are my coping mechanisms:

I do not save quite as many when I make it a point to try an average of one or two new ones per week. Somehow that lets me know that I already have a lot. Now that I'm retired, I can make a dent in the pile.

I have become more selective. A recipe with a specialty ingredient that I will not use for anything else, or that requires expensive ingredients, gets left unclipped (whether digitally or manually). I do not bother with recipes that my husband is unlikely to eat, unless it is a soup or something I would make for just me. On the other hand, he has ended up liking foods he never thought that he would. He was convinced that the speculaas I recently made would be too spicy, but he has now eaten three and loves them.

Sometimes I look at the techniques and think: The recipe authors have got to be kidding. If it is too time-consuming, and I'm unsure of what the result would be, I do not save the recipe.

If the recipe will require a significant investment in new equipment that might not be used very much, that is a red flag, and I bypass the recipe.

I avoid most trendy recipes--which is all I see these days in the online Bon Appetit; it appears to be aimed at either brand new cooks or people who want to be making the latest food fad.

I still have a lot of recipes that I want to bake, but that is what makes it so exciting and purposeful whenever I go into the kitchen. Right now, I'm working on both my favorite Christmas recipes and trying some new ones. At the moment, Beatrice Ojakangas' Danish Sugar Pretzels (the original, not the KAF re-working) is calling me, and the notched rolling pin that arrived in the mail today is waiting for me to try Swedish Knakkebrod. I figure that it can be used for more than one recipe, and it beats repeatedly stabbing the dough with a fork.

Bake and Cook on, Fellow Recipe Addicts!

[navlys]

Thanks for your help BakerAunt!

[luvpyrpom]

Navlys, another thing I do besides what Bakeraunt does, is that I make notes on the margin of the recipes. I have a huge collection of recipes, too. There's actually a section in my 3-ring binder that is labelled "DO NOT MAKE AGAIN" and some recipes do end up there.

[BevM]

I have the same addiction and have tons of cookbooks I will need to get rid of not too long in the future.

[Mike Nolan]

We have a file drawer full of recipes on 3x5 cards, plus 6 shelves of cookbooks and recipes in binders or magazine holders in the kitchen, plus another bookcase just around the corner that has several shelves of cookbooks (plus other books) and several shelves of cookbooks in the basement, too.

And I can think of a dozen or more cookbooks I'd still like to have.

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

[chocomouse]

I also critique a recipe in the margins, and write "DO NOT MAKE AGAIN" on quite a few. I sometimes add the name of a similar recipe and say "TRY THIS: " I file the recipes to avoid with the ones I do like, just so I'll not "find" that recipe again and decide to try it again. Since I retired, about 18 months ago, I've been working on actually making a lot of recipes, like Baker Aunt, but my stacks of recipes to try don't seem to be getting any shorter.

[Joan Simpson]

I've got the same problem and sometime I can't find what I'm looking for eerrr.I've recently went through a lot of mine and some that was written on paper I trashed.I love cookbooks too!

[cwcdesign]

I’m CWC and I’m addicted to recipes.

I follow a lot of what BakerAunt does. When we moved 6 years ago, I went through my file folder of clippings - I found I had multiples of certain recipes like chicken salad and brownies so I tossed them and kept just the few I might be really interested in. I also went through my cookbooks and if there was only 1 or 2 recipes, I copied the pages or if the book was falling apart, I ripped out the relevant pages.

When I got my iPad, I got the paprika app, so when I find something I want to try, I bookmark it - when I try it, I either move it to the recipe folder to keep or delete it because we didn’t like it or it was too fussy or took too long. I need to get it for my laptop for cross referencing.

I recently discovered that I have recipes in my bookmarks and a folder on my desktop that I have to go through. Many were ones for Michael, but the boys and I don’t have the same tastes. I offer to make them something their dad liked, and they look at me funny

[skeptic7]

I try to keep track of recipes I used, I print a lot of them out and put them in several three ring binders, but sometimes I bake from a cook book and don't record it. There are so many recipes that look interesting but I don't have the time to try now, and can't find them later.

On current trends, what do you think about cooking a meal in a pan in the oven "sheet pan meals". I haven't tried it but it looks like it would be difficult to get everything to cook evenly without parts being undercooked, over cooked or dried out.
In the good old days ( imaginary leave it to Beaver days ) people used to try to cook several dishes in the oven at once, but these were in different containers so they could stagger the start times.

[Mike Nolan]

Michael Ruhlman in his book "The Making of a Chef" mentions a dish with a variety of soft and hard vegetables in it, the challenge being to get them all done without overcooking some of them. I know when I make vegetable soup or a pot roast I have 3 or 4 points at which I add various ingredients so that some ingredients don't get cooked to mush.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are about the only times I try to do 2 or more dishes in the oven at the same time. A lot of our meals are 'one pot' dishes or at most with just one or two side dishes, and often one of those is raw, like a salad. I have taken to doing broccoli or hard boiled eggs with the standalone induction burner, but mostly because it is fast and easy to control.

[cwcdesign]

Skeptic - I love sheet pan recipes! They have been a real time saver for me.

The trick I have found is to have everything in similar size pieces. If it happens to be for chicken breasts, I always make sure the butcher cuts them in half horizontally. And I usually cover the sheet pans with foil for easy clean-up.

[Italiancook]

My printer is the culprit in my recipe addiction. I own only 11 cookbooks that I use and 2 I don't use. Someday, I may toss the latter 2. My problem is that I check Foodnetwork's site everyday and frequently check KAF blog and site. I print everything that looks good, which are way too many to use.

I started the year with the resolution to make one new recipe each week. I didn't keep that resolution. I think I've made a new one every 4-6 weeks, on average. So I'm not making a dent in my pile of recipes, because I keep printing off more.

Then there are the tangents. I went on a path of wanting a sweet treat for breakfast once a week. Because I have a health issue with baking powder, I went in search of yeast coffee cakes. Turns out there are a lot of them online, and they've all been added to my pile. But I keep the ones I've baked or cooked separate, so I have 2 piles. I'm sure when I die, someone will pitch them all and wonder, "What was she thinking!?"

[BakerAunt]

Re: Sheet Pan recipes. I find it easiest to do sheet pan recipes with chicken and either cut-up potatoes or cut up sweet potatoes. I've seen some with sausage I'd like to try, but my husband is a no-sausage person, so that's out.

When I did a pot roast in the oven, my husband finally realize why I prefer to do them there rather than in the crock pot: the answer is that I can add the vegetables later and not have them turn to mush.

When we were preparing to move, the toner went out in the printer, and I suspect that after we got here my husband took a long time to replace it in order to deter my recipe copying. I have tried to cut back on what I print, and I'm a lot more particular these days.

[Mike Nolan]

The toner going out on your printer is just a good excuse to get another printer! (I've been looking at high res photo printers lately.)

I'm a tool/gadget junkie at least as much as I am a recipe/cookbook junkie.

My son just got a 3D printer, or at least that's what I think it is. I wouldn't know what to do with a 3D printer. (On the other hand, the high pressure water cake cutter they had at chocolate school is something I could have a lot of fun with, good thing it costs $100K.) And my wife has said a pretty definite NO to getting a tabletop sheet roller. But what I REALLY want is a blast chiller and an anti-griddle!

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