New Year, New Recipes

Been back about a week, and I still haven't eaten anywhere new in Philadelphia. What I've been doing is cooking new-to-me recipes at home, instead.

Thanks to a post by a local vegan couple over at Goodbye Texas, Hello PA about a cookbook challenge — actually making an effort to cook recipes in cookbooks instead of just reading them — I decided that I should probably take on the same challenge, since I have a whole bookshelf of ignored cookbooks, not to mention the new ones I just got for Christmas. Oh, and let's not forget the stack of last year's cooking magazines in my living room with dog-eared pages, and the online bookmark folder of hundreds of recipes.You might think that since I write a food blog, I'm always trying new recipes, but I don't. I rely mostly on my basic cooking knowledge and a well stocked pantry and fridge to come up with most meals. Just look in the fridge, see what's there, and start cooking. I want to make all those recipes I bookmark and dog-ear, but, invariably, I forget about them two minutes after I've marked them.

So, my new "thing" is to make a short list (not to overwhelm myself) of recipes I'd like to make, and pin them on the fridge. There's no time line or "this will be made on Monday, and this on Tuesday," because I don't like too much rigidity.

I probably should note where I found the recipes, because it took a while to figure out where the onion and blue cheese pasta recipe on the list came from — a new cookbook, which, or course, I forgot two minutes after I wrote it on the list.

To new things, and new recipes!