About the Recipes

Hmmmmm...not like I have a lot of "free" time right now.

But, I do have A.A.D.D. -- or at least I am easily distracted AND I need to keep interesting and creative projects close at hand so I don't go crazy. People may laugh at this, so what. I think of myself as a fairly creative and interesting person, but it comes with certain costs. One is the distraction factor. Add that to a long-term perfecting of procrastination, and this is what you get.

There I was. In December. Trying to finish unloading boxes from downstairs and get the house cleaned up for the in-laws to visit -- which we were very glad to have them coming down, btw! Something kept catching my eye, and screaming my name...my two bulging and threatening-to-burst homemade cookbooks, that is!

So, I took a break and dismantled both of them. Threw away the notebooks, no longer usable, having seen decades of use and moves, and handling. Threw away hundreds of pages, recipes we never tried, probably won't use, duplicates, junk. That reduced the paper pile to just enough pages to fit snuggly into a gallon-sized freezer bag. AND, I was able to locate the recipes for spice cake, to make Mike's birthday cake. And the rum balls recipe, and a few more.



Now, they sit in a pile on the floor, waiting patiently to be converted to digital format. In our quest to reduce paper and junk in our lives, to be less complicated and more mobile, the recipe books are going to shift format for us.


That is when I decided to also post some of my recipes online, so they are easily accessible to some others who had asked for them. Once typed in, they can be copy-n-pasted all over tarnation, so it's all good. We have no "secret family recipes", even though I'll often edit my own recipes and so what you read here may not be exactly what you get from my kitchen, but it is entirely spontaneous and unintentionally different. Plus, I type pretty fast, so in the end, I will have spent less total time looking for recipes once they are all on my computer, than I would have spent digging through pages and pages of my overstuffed notebooks or now the decadent and frilly freezer bag!

And it's all about timing. Discovered a few days ago that Grandma is on the lookout for a "couple or more" favorite recipes to be sent to her friend for a project. Turns out to be a recipe book project of family recipes, hopefully all of the ones we grew up on from Down County.

So I looked thru my fancy baggie this morning and made some wonderful discoveries. First of all, in the name of lightening the load, I found I could toss even more of these recipes--almost anything previously untried can be found online at www.recipes.com or some other similar website. There are only a handful of tried and true recipes that I go back to over and over again, so I'll keep those. Maybe a handful that I researched and fully intend to try that have graphics I like. All the rest....they will become kindling today! Woo Hoo! We come from a long line of hunters and gatherers and hoarders. Big on the hoarding! We hold onto everything, just everything. "In Case..." In fact, it probably contributed to at least 20 of the more than 100 lbs I intend to shed as we downsize everything about our lives.

Now that we have the internet, we don't "need" to hold onto these papers and drag them around from place to place. Sure, it may feel like we are just substituting one for another by making them digital, but the truth is, I can copy and store everything in my life in digital format to a small box that will fit into my hands...and I intend to! Then, we'll be more free to enjoy the physical parts that are living and have no strings to these stupid boxes we keep moving from place to place. We can print pictures as we please...or pull them up onto a screen and take a trip to memory lane anytime.

So, back to the recipes. They may, and likely will, fill up a lot of space here. Some of them may not be too healthy, so they are "sometimes foods" buy you may find one or two you want to try or pass on as a housewarming gift. Enjoy the ones you do take, feel free to pass them on to others.