I Stopped Counting at 75

I've been working on a few very long overdue projects here of various subject matter. One that's been a real sticking point is my cookbook and recipe collection. My kitchen isn't very big (you already know that), so I cannot keep my cookbooks and recipes in my actual kitchen. Instead, I keep them in my office, which is adjacent to the kitchen. Our office is also too small, and the cabinetry was a "temporary" fix about 7 years ago, until we could have time to remodel (not even started yet). But, I do have 1 cabinet which is dedicated to cookbooks and recipes.

Overall I am a very organized person. You might not know that by looking at my day to day lifestyle, but I do have some issues that require me to deal with systems constantly. If I do not have a "system" for everything, things become chaotic. This is especially true for paperwork, including recipes.

I'm a fiend for recipes. I am constantly trolling the internet, print media, books, television, anything for recipes. Part of this is because through the years we have had so many people come through here with special dietary needs, and part of this simply because I'm so about food, especially baking.

My formal culinary training began close to 10 years ago when we began to prepare for this place, and has moved forward through the years piecemeal. Some formal school, some chefs come here to train me privately, and sometimes I've gone to chef's homes/businesses for more private training. I always return with more recipes, either purchased or developed in the training.  My first culinary arts teacher set me up perfectly with a sectioned notebook with laminated pages of recipes, as well as a DVD of all the recipes. Perfect!  Things have not gone that way for the rest of my training and culinary career. Admittedly if I do not do something immediately when I'm thinking of it, often it will go by the boards. When I find a recipe on line, in a magazine, or wherever else, it should go in a special spot.  Key word... "should."

One day a few weeks ago I opened my cookbook cabinet and was horrified to look at it with a fresh eye.  Complete and utter chaos. I began counting cookbooks.  I stopped counting at 75.  In addition to greater than 75 cookbooks, I was dumbstruck by the loose recipe chaos I had created, and realized it was time to really put a new system into place.

It has taken me weeks, but I have organized my recipe collection. I have color coded notebooks for categories, and then within each color coded notebook I sub-categorized the collection.  I also now have an entire notebook of recipes that I have clipped, printed or written to test.  An ENTIRE notebook to test. I shudder to think I'd ever have to admit how many notebooks full of recipes I have in addition to the actual cookbooks now that I have completely revamped my collection.

My next task is to organize the actual books. This will be an issue because other than alphabetical, how do you organize well over 75 books, most of which are about the same thing (baking).  Funny thing with this collection of over 75 books, I use about 6 of them routinely, and then another 4 beyond that semi-routinely (and those 4 are special needs books dealing with allergies or illness for example). I suppose I should have a wee bit of shame with the excess in my cookbook collection, but I essentially do not. Although I've gone on a couple self-imposed cookbook interventions in the past, I've got 2 books on pre-order now, and a list of about 6 more I'm so wanting. Time for another cookbook intervention I wonder?

All that is left to do is label my notebooks. They are stacked shiny, full and new with beautiful sheet protectors over each recipe, scrawled with notes all over most pages (yeah, I have to change a lot of recipes here due to weather conditions... I write a lot of crap directly onto every printed page). It's been a long haul of papers, books, clippings, and clutter on my dining room table what with this project. Today I'll be sweeping clean at least half of the dining room table, and placing them upright in my cookbook cabinet.

Some people are proud because they get a promotion, receive an award, or achieve a major milestone.  Here, I'm just proud to have an organized cabinet. Some will understand, others not. For those that understand, there's hope for your cabinet too.