Cookbook Conundrum

I have this thing about books. 

I like them. 

It's that simple. 

  But "simple" becomes complicated when too many books try to take over. 

This is the case with my cookbooks. 

In these pictures, what you are seeing is most, but not all, 

of a cookbook collection that has accumulated over 26 years. 

I have my favorites, like the original Cherry Glade cookbook. 

The page with Markel Miriam's Chocolate Cake is spattered with cocoa stains and buttermilk and the cover is a bit battered (meaning it is beat up a little and it has literal batter on it!). 

The kids call it "the green cookbook" and I am not allowed to ever get rid of it

even though the black spiral thingie holding it together is coming out. 

I think this is part of it's charm. 

I also have the Cherry Glade Cookbook, Volume 2.

The cover on it?

Completely torn off, or should I say, "Gently worn off with good use."? 

 The page with the brownies is just about as bad as the chocolate cake page in the "green cookbook". 

Then there is the classic Mennonite Community Cookbook 

that was my mom's and somehow I ended up with it. 

I don't think I just took it without asking, but I do have a cookbook obsession. 

Mom, if you want it back, just ask. Or you can just borrow it. For a day. 

It's funny, but really, about the only recipe I use out of this one is for Strawberry Shortcake. 

That's it. 

I have a problem. 

So, yesterday I decided to sort through this cookbook conundrum.

I did manage to weed out a few that I don't use that much (or at all). 

One of them was called "Breakfast In Bed". Now, Leo doesn't use a cookbook for breakfast dishes so if I were to have breakfast in bed using a recipe from this book, I'd be the one making it and if I was the one making it, I wouldn't go back to bed to eat it. 

Goodbye cookbook. 

Ah, that was liberating. 

As I sorted, I did look through some of the pages to see if I was going to actually utilize the book.

In a Pampered Chef "Season's Best" booklet, I found a recipe for BBQ Chicken Taquitos. 

I had all the ingredients except for the carrots (no big loss there) and it called for Smoky BBQ Rub which I bought from my sister and hardly ever use because in reality, I don't cook enough from a recipe to figure out how to use it best. 

(Tell me again why I have so many cookbooks?!?)

In the midst of sorting cookbooks, I paused and actually cooked. From a recipe. 

Ah, that was liberating too, in it's own way. 

Have I mentioned that I am a very distractible person when it comes to cleaning, sorting, organizing?  

I am. 

Very.

It takes me forever to get anything done. 

But it was good!

I did manage, in the end, to get rid of a few cookbooks. I cleaned off a shelf and rearranged a little. 

Cookbooks represent family dinners, time spent together eating something "made from scratch".

It's a good thing.

But too much of a good thing and I don't know where to start. 

Cleaning out is good too. 

I may even be motivated to cook something else. 

The menu for tonight:

Kraft Macaroni and Cheese 

Just kidding. 

There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will. ~Robert Frost

Love,

Dianne