Today at lunch a co-worker mentioned that she has a drawerful of recipes that she had printed from the web. She had every intention of organizing them, but somehow they just stay in the drawer strewn in a haphazard manner. She admits that it would be easy to just put them in some sort of a book, but instead she leafs through them every time she's looking for a specific recipe.
Another co-worker confessed that her sister had given her back a recipe box of family recipes that my co-worker had assembled for her as a wedding present. "I'll never use these," she said. Imagine!

Bill loves to read recipes out loud and think about making the dishes. His collection methods have changed with the advent of the PC and printers. He no longer rips the NY Times Sunday magazine apart. The bookcase full of cooking books largely goes untouched. He peruses Rachel Ray's site or Emeril LaGasse's. He'll even go to the website after a cooking show on TV has indicated that the recipe can be found on it's sister site.

With recipe cards I like looking at the handwriting of the chef. Some of them are even dated! Most of them have food stains on them. Part of the charm of actually following the recipe is thinking of the woman who wrote on the card. This recipe card thing is a tradition that I fear which will not last much longer. It's so easy to go to web, type in the name of a dish, or some ingredients and voila : you have an instant recipe (yes, that was a slam against my French chocolatier). The downside is that you end up with a lot of information on 8x11 pieces of paper.
I kind of like that all my tried and true recipes are in one easy, retrievable box of love.
I kind of like that all my tried and true recipes are in one easy, retrievable box of love.
I agree completely with you as well as the loss of handwritten notes (especially the ones written on beautiful stationary).
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