But First

I have a lovely little old tongue and groove oak recipe box and a beautiful old writing book, bound by a grosgrain ribbon, that I’ve used over the decades to write down and save recipes.

Now let’s back up here for a minute (already), and take a look at the word recipe. Wikipedia offers the following definition: ‘A recipe is a set of instructions that show how to prepare or make something, especially a culinary dish.’ and cites the following etymology: ‘Recipe is a latin word meaning 'take (imperative)', that is, an instruction to have the ingredients ready.’.

I use the term recipe loosely, because most of my “recipes” consist of a descriptive name for a dish and nothing more. On occasion, there’s a scribbled outline of ingredients and perhaps an abbreviated instruction or two. When I have taken the liberty of actually composing an official recipe, it often makes sense only to me. No one else can intuit the list of ingredients that make up my “carrot watercress soup”, no one else knows that the carrots are pureed and the watercress is chopped and added at the last minute, no one else knows that the soup can be served hot or chilled.

An example that my sister once chided me for was a formal recipe I’d given her that included a title, a list of ingredients and a detailed set of instructions. So far so good. However, somewhere near the end of this particular composition came the words “but first” and I threw in something important that of course impacted the outcome of the entire dish and would have been a handy bit of information for the cook to have had at the outset. I wrote the recipe for me. I already knew what was necessary to know in order for this particular culinary endeavor to be a success. She didn’t. My bad. I do hope her meal wasn’t too much of a disaster.

Most of my extant recipes would be better described as recipe ideas since the combination of ingredients changes from one time to the next, depending upon my mood and my vegetable drawer. A natural result of this haphazard approach is a shamefully long list of kitchen disasters – time and money and hard-to-find cherished ingredients wasted. There’s an especially long list of baking failures. Those are the worst. And those are the times when I miss my compost pile the most. It used to lighten the burden of guilt – at least my batch of babaganouj bread might serve some purpose in the greater scheme of universe. (I do hope that you won't hesitate to share your "recipe ideas" here, even if it's just a few words or a name for a dish... we can soar with it.)

For the purposes of this blog, when I write about recipe, all that is going to change. Sure, I can share recipe ideas, which I will probably continue to do since they sometimes come fast and furious, a phenomenon that all cooks are familiar with. When that happens and it appeals to you, just take the name of the dish and run with it.

But as of this moment forward, I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m gonna write down some real recipes. This is going to be so much fun and a very good exercise in discipline. Thank you for allowing me to share this experience with you. Warning: some of these recipes might be “works in progress” and I promise to remember to alert the reader to this fact as I continue to refine ideas.

I am not a professional cook. My years of experience have been clocked in my own kitchen with my own captive culinary audience. Bear this in mind. Any future "recipes" that I share here are posted by one domestic cook who’d like to make a mess in the kitchen with her peers along side her. This blog is definitely not all about cooking. But that's one of the parts of my life that I'll be exposing.

I'll be posting about a bunch of other stuff too. As the number of posts starts to mount, I’ll come up with some sort of organization. This is my first blog so there will be a learning curve.