Update: My Recipe Book

Back when I first started this blog, I wrote about my relentless recipe collecting and a little thing I like to call My Book (pronounced Mah BOOOk; this is important, so get it right!). Last week I realized that I had been neglecting my recipe cataloguing—the stack of recipes ripped from magazines and printed from the internet started to take over a section of the kitchen counter—so I got out my tape and scissors and got to work.

My Book has now grown into three: the original is now for main courses and sides; one notebook holds recipes of appetizers, soups and salads; another is for desserts and sweets alone. I have a peculiar feeling of accomplishment that my recipe collection is growing so rapidly. I know that this is probably not something to be proud of. Most likely this is an early warning sign that I will one day end up with some compulsive hoarding illness, surrounded my many cats and volumes of recipes.

And yet, I am proud. I just hope I don’t end up on Intervention or some surreal BBC documentary.

Casserole Crazy? Indeed.

After living in a cinder-block prison cell my freshman year of college, I was ecstatic to move on to a roach-infested apartment-style dorm in Chinatown. This was back in my non-cooking days, but even then I was excited to have a real kitchen. So my new roomies and I decided that we should take turns making everyone a meal once a week. Kristin usually made pasta (delicious pasta with lots of vegetables, I might add). And I remember Liz making chili with imitation (soy?) beef and blue pancakes (also yummy stuff).

I always made casseroles.

I am truly a casserole freak. I really, really, really like casseroles (especially tex-mex ones). So I was excited to learn that someone has deemed my favorite dish worthy of its very own cookbook.

Emily Farris, a fellow lover of casseroles, has compiled a list of upgraded casserole recipes from friends and family, as well as a few celebrity chefs like Paula Deen and Bobby Flay, in her new cookbook Casserole Crazy: Hot Stuff for Your Oven. Farris is a young urbanite and a fun-looking gal (she hosts an annual casserole competition in Brooklyn), so I’m sure the book will be filled with classy recipes and quirky commentary.

You can check out her blog for more information, as well as a few of her original recipes. And if you’re interested in buying the book, it’s available on Amazon. Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait until after the holidays to splurge on this one, but I can’t wait to get my hands on it!

Mah Boook

This (points left) is mah boook. In my previous life as a college student, mah boook was just another notebook, albeit much hipper than your average 3-ring binder—note the super kawaii Gwen Stefani and her Harajuku Girls gracing the cover. It was lugged about to classes in my pink backpack and filled with notes about…important things that have already exited my memory (thanks 5-figure education!). Of course, since the notebook is not your everyday, run-of-the-mill, Zac Efron or Hannah Montana juvenile binder, I was obligated to find a higher purpose for Gwen and her girls after my educational journey had ended.

Now it is mah boook for all things coook. Since the beginning of June, I have been filling my little plastic sheet protectors with every recipe I can get my grubby, non-note-taking hands on. I’ve been pulling recipes from magazines (Family Circle is my fave for easy, yummy recipes). I troll around on Simply Recipes and All Recipes specifically to add to the growing collection. Sometimes I call my mom and jot down an old favorite I’m dying to make. I don’t type it up later either; I just throw in the handwritten note to add character to mah boook. It’s a never-ending work in progress. I hope someday mah boook resembles my mom’s book. She isn’t a cook either, but she has a book. And every time we bring out a certain recipe, I’m always surprised to find a little kid’s scrawl of various numbers on the back of the handwritten ingredients and instructions. My mom wasn’t too picky about typing up her recipes either; she just threw in the version written on the back of my third-grade math homework. The best books aren’t just a compilation of all the best recipes, they’re almost like time-capsules of good memories and friends and family dinners.



So, I know it’s not the most original cooking tip in the kitchen, but I think there’s a reason it’s repeated so often. Start filling up your own book with favorite recipes. I slip mine into plastic protector sheets and organize with colorful tabs according to meal course, but the best part is testing out a new recipe and writing down your rating in the margins! And 10 years from now, you may just pull out a recipe and be surprised at what you find hiding behind it.