RECIPE RESCUE

CHRONICLE: ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, 2023

This chronicle isn’t about recipes that don’t work or those that need tweaking to make better. This is about the total makeover, the rehab, the re-invention of what I refer to as my recipe dumpster.

2024 is the year I’m laying the recipe dumpster to rest.

I am lucky enough to have a stash of handwritten recipes. Most are from my mother in her telltale handwriting­–she shaped her lowercase “e” like a backwards three. There’s even one, the oldest in the bunch, in my grandmother’s (my mother’s mother) handwriting. Some are from friends in their handwriting. Of course, some are in my own handwriting.

It’s easy to tell which are the most popular, the most prized recipes. They are a dead giveaway. They carry the stains, the dog-eared corners, the heavy creasing accrued by time and multiple uses.  

Despite considering these recipes to be amongst my most treasured possessions, I have been carrying them around in a shoebox where they congregate in a highly unorganized, slovenly mess, AKA, “the recipe dumpster”.

The shoebox is lavender. I bought it specifically to use as a container for the recipe collection. I imagined turning it into a thing of beauty, like something out of a magazine, organized to within an inch of its life. It has a name plate on the front where a label is supposed to go. When I bought the shoebox, I even imagined learning calligraphy so I could then insert my hand-crafted RECIPES label into that waiting name plate.

Fifteen years later, I have not learned calligraphy and the name plate on the lavender shoe box remains empty.

New Year’s resolutions are not my thing. After years of falling prey to the inevitable January health craze imploring me to lose ten pounds in three short weeks or to follow some impossible to stick to exercise regimen, it’s clear these kinds of resolutions don’t work for me.

Now I prefer to set a goal that’s mine, something I want to achieve, not what the media thinks I ought to do. January is all about a refresh, a time to begin new projects or figure out something to cross off or add to the bucket list. I like to re-visit my long-standing to-do list and decide which item or items I want to cross off by years’ end.

I love crossing items off a list. It’s wildly satisfying.

Starting this Substack was something I crossed off a list.

When I worked as a chef and caterer, I would not have survived without creating lists and working steadily to complete the tasks at hand.

And yet…there always seem to be a few things, big things, that stubbornly remain on the list. Organizing my recipe collection has been one of those things.

But 2024, I swear, is the year the recipe dumpster goes bye-bye.

My goal for the new and improved recipe file is to organize it by category. Nothing crazy. You probably know what this will look like. There will be a section for appetizers and soups, one for main courses, one for vegetables, and one for desserts. Oh, and one for breads. Just thinking about being able to easily find the recipe I’m looking for without spending twenty minutes in search and rescue mode makes my heart beat a bit faster.

In the end, the rehabbed recipe collection will be-fit the status the recipes hold for me. Each recipe is like a handwritten prize, a road map leading to a memory, pointing towards an occasion, signaling a flash of home.

This project has been on my list for longer than I like to admit. For various reasons, it has felt overwhelming, in part because the thought of re-typing all those recipe cards was just too daunting. It’s been easier to keep the lid on the box rather than dive into this project, no matter how much I crave having the recipes organized and easy to find.

But now, enough is enough. Now I know about scanning! I’m NOT going to re-type the recipes. That’s crazy. And I’m not going to torture myself anymore because I didn’t learn calligraphy. There are fonts for that! I also plan to incorporate space for all the recipes I’ve accumulated along the way.

I’m not entirely sure what the new recipe file or format will look like but I’ll be posting photos of my progress as the recipe rescue project takes shape.

So, lookout recipe dumpster…your days are numbered.