Done and done.

After about 4 days (and only 2 hours of actual working time), thar she be:

(I just slipped a discarded magazine page in the front sleeve, for the sake of having a yummy picture to look at.)  I bought a heavy-duty rubber-edged binder at Staples and a pack of grey cardstock for the pages.  A set of colourful dividers and I was off to the races.

These are all recipes that I'd been holding onto for a while and though I haven't made them all, they're the ones I can see myself making.  I split them up into sections that made sense to me.  I have one for soups, seafood/fish, meat, desserts, and gluteny recipes (just in case anyone asks me for suggestions, I'm keeping my favourites back there for quick reference, even though I can't eat them anymore).

There's a section on vegetarian dishes:

There's even a section for canning/preserve notes:

Let this be a lesson to me - if I buckle down, these little things don't have to take long to get underway.  Definitely not as long as I can take procrastinating to avoid doing them.


The nice thing is that this will keep my cookbooks in - if not "pristine" - dignified condition.  I am hell on cookbooks.  Scratch that.  I'm hell on all books.  For someone who lives to knit and read, I sure do treat both with a fair bit of disregard.

{My sister once asked me to scan and send her my copy of our mom's bread stuffing recipe (I think?) and she called me afterwards to demand what the hell I had done to the page - she could barely read the writing, for all the oil stains, rips and smudges on it.}

I haven't photocopied my cookbook faves yet, to add to the binder.  I am going to do that at work sometime this week.  So far, the binder is about 1/3 full.  I'm just taping/stapling smaller sheets onto the cardstock and any print outs that I have on decent paper just got hole-punched and crammed in there.  I'm also going to start a plastic envelope for potential new recipes at the front of the binder.  Once I try them and they pass muster, they'll get upgraded to a permanent position in their respective sections in the binder.

Thank you SO MUCH for your suggestions (and keep 'em coming, of course).  It's funny, because I got the suggestion for polenta and had actually just tagged it in Michael's book as something I wanted try.  I know I said I've backed off corn - and I have - but I still allow myself to have some once or twice a week.  The reason I don't eat a lot is that I find it very hard on my system.  I just need to be very aware of my intake.  Oh, and someone suggested quinoa pasta - I have tried it and yes, it is good (better than most rice pastas, in fact).  I've been gluten-free for four years, and have had a surprising array of options in GF products (surprising, given where I live, I mean).  The best gluten-free pasta I've ever had is actually corn pasta (some informal research done among some of my GF peeps netted the same affirmation).  Alas, it is still corn and is still something for me to watch out for.  Plus, it's GF and if I'm being honest, the taste/texture is still not *quite* the same as wheat pasta, so while it's nice to have in the house, we eat pasta in moderation.

In other totally unrelated news, I have begun The Socks:

Someone asked me what I was holding up in one of my recent posts.  That is a set of interchangeable metal "Options" needles, from KnitPicks.  You get a clear vinyl case full of metal tips and a set of cables that you screw into the ends of the tips to customize your circular needles.  That case I was holding up also contains a series of 40" circulars in all the smaller sizes KnitPicks can't offer in the interchangeables, which I purchased at the same time, knowing I needed to do some sock knitting.  I am VERY happy with them and wish I had bought them years ago.  I might not have hated circulars so fervently, had I tried these (full review to follow in an upcoming post).


Oh, and I should probably tell you that I watched "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" this weekend.  Holy.  Cow.  In a good way.  A very very very good way.  (Disclaimer: if you have a weak stomach, I advise viewer discretion.  There were a couple of scenes that I found exceedingly difficult to watch.)  I'll be renting the second and third films next weekend, so don't tell me what happens!