Battling the Binder

Here it is. The big monster. My binder of recipes. Possibly my husband's most hated item on the bookshelf (well maybe 2nd most hated, behind stacks of Cooking Light he swears I never use)

 

  Like many home cooks, I clip recipes that look tasty from magazines, newspaper, and occasionally online. Since I like to present the illusion that I am super organized, I filled this big ol' binder with sheet protectors & even organized it by main ingredient (mostly)

Physics?! I never took Physics. Apparently I labelled my brother's binders for him
his senior year of high school...when I was in college...weird.

I flip through this thing all the time looking for recipes, but usually don't have enough ingredients on hand to make anything. I've tested a few & made notes (very important when your husband is your only guinea pig - you do NOT want to repeat something that wasn't a hit or forget to make the right tweaks).

That chicken scratch at the bottom is all the thing I successfully changed about this recipe.
(mainly because I didn't have the right cheese or veggies on hand)

BUT NO MORE. I have a plan. I'm really gonna go through this darn thing. Page by Page. Recipe by Recipe....yikes.

I'll post my progress, hopefully remembering to take pictures as I cook (or "chef" as we call it at home, which is totally inaccurate but sounds fun) & review the recipes...wish me luck!

but amy, you're not a rooster

Even though this is our first introduction, you probably could have guessed that I'm not a rooster - I mean, roosters probably can't type right? Right. What I am is a mid-20s girl obsessed with food television, food magazines, and slowly learning her way around the kitchen. Which is step 2 on my 32 step plan to become a stay at home mom, but I'll get into all that later.

So why a rooster? Because of this silly apron:

Mama bear gave me this apron when I got my first apartment in college. She's never been much of an apron-wearing lady, but it was hers for years & her mom's before that. The top reads "Ruler of the Roost"  & the text under the chickens says "The rooster may crow but the hen delivers the goods"

The 1st time my lovely almost-husband saw me wearing it, he thought it said "Rooster of the Roost" (which seems somewhat redundant) and kept calling me that. He completely missed the fact that 1 - roosters are boys, and 2 - the message of the apron is about hens (Who knew there was a feminist movement in the barnyard?) Regardless, the name stuck & he calls me the rooster of the roost when I'm wearing this bad boy, or even just talking about what I'm going to make for dinner.

So here we go - you, me & the chickens.