I've spent the last week typing up recipes.
342. So far. I have roughly 10 to go before I'm down to a confusing bunch of recipes.
Here's the deal. These are recipes from the recipe boxes of 2 deceased family members. And if I've learned anything from this process, it's the following:
#1 - If your family member cooks something you absolutely love, ask them for the recipe while they are still alive. You may not be able to find it after their death, and if you do, you may not get complete instructions. See #2
#2 - Just because you know how to do it, doesn't mean the next person to read the recipe knows how to do it. I have 20 recipes specifically, in which the writer either left off an amount of something, or instructions, or the NAME of the recipe. Is this a marinade? Is this a salad dressing? I do not know. I have 7 recipes I will have to blindly make to find out what the heck they are and then name them, if I can't find someone who recognizes them as something they ate.
#3 - When you pull a recipe from a magazine, mark the one you pulled it for, or the one you used. I know that I have extraneous recipes in my collection, because a magazine page containing 7 recipes was in the box, but it didn't indicate which one it was cut out for.
#4 - Just because an appliance, like a crock pot, comes with recipes doesn't mean you used all of the recipes. Once again. Mark the ones you tried and liked. Same applies to stacks of recipe cards, if you used it, mark it.
#5 - Take the time to write it down. I know that a lot of cooks make something good, Something that everyone loves that they make. They don't make it the same way every time, they don't really have a recipe for it, take the time at least once to write down what you do as you do it (or have another person write it down as you do it.) Ideally, then take it out the next time you make it and see if you can write down any variations. If you don't do this, your recipe will die with you, and what will they make at your memorial party if they can't make the dish you made the best and bitch about how it's still not as good as when you made it even though you gave them the recipe and how much they miss you?
Your future grandson's or nephew's wife will appreciate it. Trust me.
2 comments:
Very good advice! I know that many recipes have died with my family members, even if we try to make it its never quite right. I really need to start finding out how my mother-in-law makes all of her desserts, they are family legend!
This is something we really need to do as well.
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