A Home Cook from Magazines

Magazine Stack on Flickr by thebittenword.com

I'm not a great cook, but I can follow a recipe and make things turn out OK most times. I'm realizing that the way I meal plan heavily involves magazines -- mostly pages ripped from magazines that I keep in a file folder.

As Jane started pulling books off shelves I had to move my cookbooks out -- and then the bookshelf got replaced with a bench but the cookbooks haven't made a reappearance. So I don't really make recipes from cookbooks. They're tucked away in a box for now.

My magazine clipping file folder is getting out of control. I tried to organize things (chicken, beef, pasta, desserts), but as I use recipes I don't put them back/they land back at the top of the pile making things even messier.

I know if I went digital -- finding the recipes on the magazine's websites and then saving them in an online recipe box somewhere -- I could search and find things more easily. But I wouldn't want technology in the kitchen to get messed up by my less-than-stellar cleaning skills. (Just ask my mother-in-law ... she'll be here in a week and ALWAYS leaves my kitchen cleaner than when she arrives without even trying!) So I keep slogging away in my paper-filled world.

I subscribe to so many magazines it's obscene, and yet I still find ones I want to buy on the newsstand. (One I love but don't subscribe to is HGTV, and I've started to like Southern Living. My m-i-l subscribes to Saturday Evening Post, which I found to be a really good magazine too.) My dream job in J-school was to work at a women's magazine. (Although after reading them for so many years I don't think I'd like it so much.)

I'm planning Thanksgiving dinner mostly from magazine recipes -- from years past and a few new this year. There are family recipes of course and non-recipe things like mashed potatoes or deviled eggs. It's going to be fantastic. I love food so much.

What's your plan for Thanksgiving? Do you have a smart way to organize your recipes?