Write in your cookbooks!

Do it. Do it now. Do it often. Dirty up those cookbooks. Scribble in them. Doodle in them. Document in them.

If you are a food lover, someone that loves cooking, or even someone who just opens a cookbook occasionally, WRITE IN YOUR COOKBOOKS.

Maybe this seems like an obvious notion to you, but it was anything but obvious to me. It wasn't until my sister-in-law told me about how much she loved reading an old annotated cookbook that I even considered scarring up my cookbooks with my chicken scratch. It's as though it were some blasphemous act to write a note in a cookbook that is your very own. The thought of writing in pen, let alone pencil, in any sort of book other than a notebook seemed like a cardinal sin. But why?

For no good reason - that's for sure!

So now I write in my cookbooks. I write in all of them. I write in them every time I make something new, and even sometimes when I make something for a second, third, or fourth time.

I always write the date - that's a good start. It's fun to look back at when you made it for the first time. I write about who I served it to and whether or not they liked it (and if I liked it). I write about any substitutions, additions, or omissions. Best of all, I write about what was going on when I made it.

They say that we have strong associations between smells and memories. Well, now I also have strong associations between foods and memories.

We had a chicken dish the night we got Mowgli. I made lemon poppyseed pound cake, oatmeal energy bars, and borscht the day before JC was born.

What do I do when it's an electronic recipe? I blog about it I guess!