liminations: a new year resolution

When I moved to college, I created a 3-ring binder with all the recipes I thought I would want or need. They were organized and mostly handwritten.

Throughout college, the binder became increasingly disorganized {and encrusted with flour}.
With marriage, I "graduated" to cookbooks and tried to transition to a recipe card filing system.

Recipe cards seemed to work for a lot of people but for a variety of reasons, they did not work for me.

{exhibit a: the recipe box}

Over the years, I amassed a large quantity of recipes that I placed in my recipe "box."
I do have a tidy shelf of cookbooks {of which I use 3 with regularity} and then...
I have the recipes in my box.
These recipes are clipped {or torn} from magazines, glued onto index cards from friends, printed from the computer, and handwritten onto scraps of paper. One year, friends and family members sent us their favorite, mostly easy recipes as inspiration for surviving the addition of a newborn baby.

All those went into the box.

I have created my own recipes for things that I write onto whatever paper is laying nearby.

Or paper scraps with recipes scratched down while at a friend's house for coffee.

{exhibit b}

Last week I needed my recipe for spinach-artichoke dip and I went to my box.
The box has no real order; the front is the back and the back is the front.

Directing someone else to find a recipe in the box can get a little tricky but I knew exactly what I was looking for: the black and white, red hot pepper card with the smudge of spinach on the edge.