These tell-all posts about reading and food are…fun. So I’m back with another round of questions for home cooks and eaters everywhere.
1. least favourite foods?
Let’s address this elephant in the room first. What I’m about to share will likely shock and horrify some of you as I suspect many of my least favourite foods are reader favourites. Prepare yourself. Maybe grab some chips and dip in which to drown your sorrows…
- I don’t like spicy food. In fact, John jokes that I find ketchup spicy (I don’t and have already confessed my undying love for ketchup)…but he’s not that far off base. Being married to someone who loves very spicy things complicates matters slightly but, for the most part, we’ve learned to compromise and he adds hot sauce after the rest of us dish out our food.
- I’m not a huge fan of cheese. I don’t “dislike” cheese, but I have no problem passing on it, which I think is relatively unusual. If I’m preparing my own quesadillas or sandwiches, I leave off the cheese; shocking to everyone in my family, I prefer to take the melted cheese off the top of lasagne. Melted and/or crispy cheese is not my thing.
- I don’t like salsa. Or, more generally, any dip for chips. Weird, I know. I love flavourful sauces and I love chips, but not the two together.
- Quiche. Ugh. This seems odd from the outset because I LOVE eggs. Next to salt, eggs are my favourite ingredient in the kitchen. But I hate quiche. I hate the crust. I hate the texture of the eggs. I’ve had crustless quiches and hated them too. I just don’t liked baked egg dishes.
2. favourite meals to serve company?
Donair Pizzas, Chicken Noodle Soup, Chicken Mango Curry, Chili + rice.
For dessert: Cinnamon Coffee Cake or homemade peanut butter chocolate sauce over ice cream (trick: use a healthy dollop of coconut oil and melt that down with a bit of chocolate and peanut butter…when you pour it over cold ice cream, it hardens in the most delightful way).
3. least favourite kitchen Activity?
Grating. I absolutely hate grating.
If something calls for grated carrots, I will either skip the recipe or use my food processor.
I would rather dice 100 cups of celery than grate 2 cups of carrots.
I also am not a big fan of peeling. I don’t like the feeling of little bits of cold, slimy peelings on my skin.
4. Do you follow recipes?
As I’ve become more and more confident with cooking over the years, I feel less pressure to stick to recipes. For the most part, the first time I make a new dish I adhere to the directions and ingredient list closely, but don’t mind winging things once I’m familiar with a recipe.
For baking, it’s more important to get ratios right, but I will often lower the sugar content and add an extra egg or two for more protein. And I almost always add extra seasoning (e.g. smoked paprika for a soup; cinnamon in a batch of muffins – recipes never seem to call for enough seasoning, in my opinion).
5. do you like reading/owning cookbooks?
I am not a cookbook gal. I’ve tried to get into flipping through cookbooks – and have friends that really enjoy this process – but I find it overwhelming and not a fun or relaxing experience (I do like the Oh She Glows cookbooks but, honestly, would still rather just browse her website).
I own only a single cookbook – one I received as a teenager full of cookie recipes. I only keep it because Abby loves to look at the pictures and occasionally we pick a new cookie recipe to try.
In terms of go-to recipes, I have a giant binder full of them (inside plastic page protectors) and this setup has worked well for me. Some recipes I have typed up by hand, others are on recipe cards from friends, and many of them have been printed off recipe sites.
I go through my binder a few times a year and reorganize where things have gotten out of place (I have categories like Bread & Pancakes, Soups, Main Meals, Cookies and Cakes, Other Desserts…) and also get rid of any recipes I know I’m unlikely to use. Chances are if I printed off a recipe for Cauliflower Soup – which I haven’t made in 5 years – I can always find another recipe for Cauliflower Soup online. (Or, knowing the internet, more like 5,000 recipes for Cauliflower Soup.)
6. do you eat like your childhood self?
Hmmm. I still make – and enjoy! – many of the meals from my childhood. Brown Stew, Sweet and Sour Meatballs, Cinnamon Coffee Cake, Cherry Cheesecake.
- I eat less meat and fewer carbs than I did as a child. We ate a lot of bread and potatoes growing up and I don’t consume many of those products.
- We also ate dessert at lunch and supper every day (sometimes just fruit, but always something with a sweet component at the end of every meal).
- I eat a lot more eggs and butter. My family has hereditary high cholesterol and so my Mom avoided eggs and butter…but from the science I’ve read, my other life habits go a lot further in helping manage cholesterol levels and eggs can actually help improve cholesterol levels (which, for me, are currently at the best levels ever).
- I drink more water. My Mom drank water exclusively, but I grew up drinking mostly milk and a bit of juice. Now I drink water. And tea (more water). And sparkling water (you guessed it, more water).
- My vegetables have a lot more bite. Vegetables were always, always overcooked when I was growing up. I love my veggies done al dente as an adult.
So while no huge shifts (e.g. I haven’t become vegan and I don’t have any extreme food allergies), there have been lots of tweaks that make my culinary landscape unique from my childhood experience.
7. Salty or sweet?
Salty. But also sweet.
Urgh. I really wish I only had one vice, but I love both.
Things like chips and other crunchy, savoury foods are delicious and I think I would pick chips over a chocolate bar if push came to shove…but I definitely also like sweet things. Important side note – have you tried chocolate-covered chips? They are delicious, friends. The best of both worlds.
8. Dietary allergies or sensitivies?
I have spent a lot of time working through this area of my eating habits over the years. Because of various health challenges, I’ve worked hard to see what role food might play.
I’ve gone to naturopaths, osteopaths, family doctors, allergists and had a Meridian Stress Assessment completed.
I’ve cut out: gluten, dairy, soy, peanuts, mushrooms, grapes, caffeine, grains, MSG, peanut butter…lots of things. I really, really hoped there would be a smoking gun. (Especially with gluten because I know so many people that have had dramatic health improvements by going gluten-free.) I have done months and months off all the products listed above with, unfortunately, very little impact.
Eating a lot of dairy does seem to give me hayfever allergy symptoms. Too much garlic upsets my stomach (I miss you, garlic). Consuming a lot of gluten messes with my digestion.
But nothing has had any big, life-changing impacts. For the most part, I eat what I want, but tend to avoid large quantities of any item listed above. I feel very fortunate that, when consumed in moderation, I get to enjoy most foods without any negative impacts.
9. Do you ever eat in front of screens?
I suspect this could be a divisive topic.
Growing up we were very rarely allowed to eat in front of the TV (we eventually did get a family TV and stopped trekking up the hill to Ralph and Margeurite’s house). But, occasionally, either for a breaking news story or a big sporting event, we’d watch TV while we ate dessert. (My Mom would usually stay in the kitchen out of solidarity – she wasn’t a fan of mixing screens and food…at our house at least, but at my grandmother’s it was a different story.)
My grandmother was an amazing woman – widowed just before Christmas with three young children at the age of 35, she had superhuman strength and tenacity. I absolutely adored her and loved to travel – via ferry – to visit her several times a year.
From all the treasured memories I have of visiting my grandmother, the one that tops them all is of her setting up TV tables in the living room so we could watch The Price Is Right over lunchtime. The fact that she had cable was already mind-blowing but when you added in the fact that I got to watch Bob Barker for an hour – this just thrilled me to no end.
Fast forward to today; most at-home date nights we eat while watching a movie. And I love it. Because we both work from home, John and I spend a lot of time around each other, so sitting down to another meal to talk doesn’t feel necessary. Adding a fun movie or documentary to the mix, for us, makes it feel extra special.
The kids eat in front of a screen a handful of times a month and, not surprisingly, love it. They don’t really ask to watch TV while we eat (the TV is downstairs, about as far from the dining room table as you can get). But because we eat around the table so often (3 times/day when they’re home) it feels like a special treat.
10. Favourite convenience foods
Shredded cheese. See above. This is a new luxury in my life. I could never justify the extra cost of buying cheese pre-shredded, but it really is worth every penny and I refuse to look back.
(I don’t mind slicing cheese, so we still buy block cheese and I’ll gladly slice that. Just no grating. And if I had it my way, there would be no cheese in the house, so all this slicing and grating is truly a labour of love.)
Mayonnaise. I love mayo; whenever we’ve completed a Whole30 I’ve made homemade mayo. It was fine but, honestly, a nuisance, so buying mayo feels like a luxury.
Rotisserie chicken. This is also another new addition to our meal repertoire. Our town newspaper (yes, of course Wolfville has a free newspaper!) prints a coupon for rotisserie chickens (#random) every edition so they end up being about $10. We make wraps for several lunches and then boil the bones in a slow-cooker overnight to make a delicious homemade broth.
There you have it, folks. Any other grater-haters out there? Are you Team Sweet or Salty (or both, like me)?
Header photo by Kelly Neil on Unsplash
Ah, well we have a few things in common. I’m a salty AND sweet person as well. It doesn’t seem fair that I crave both! I disagree about the salsa though- chips and salsa is one of the greatest joys in life, but I don’t do it often because I limit my chip consumption (otherwise it gets out of control and I feel awful.). I also don’t like grating- so many things wrong with that activity, not the least of which is I’m always afraid I’m going to cut myself on the grater, which- in addition to being painful, obviously- is a huge hassle because I work as a massage therapist and need my hands. If I have a cut I have to figure out how to cover it up for work.
I hate mushrooms!!! And I don’t like beets, but I’m willing to keep trying with the beets because I know they’re healthy. But no mushrooms- keep the mushrooms away from me.
I have a ton of cookbooks but don’t use them often anymore- I usually get my recipes from the internet, unless it’s an old favorite, in which case I do pull out a cookbook.
I don’t want to confess just how often we eat in front of screens. It wasn’t like that when the kids were younger- we always ate properly at the table, no screens at all, but somehow we’ve devolved over the years and… well, it isn’t pretty. Let’s just say we enjoy a lot of Jeopardy episodes.
I knew salsa (and dips in general) would be a dealbreaker. I’m the lone wolf in my family; everyone else goes gaga for dips.
I grated my knuckles once – badly – as a child and think my fear/hatred of grating stems from that incident? It would be especially important as a massage therapist to protect your hands; I would think any cuts would be so hard to keep stabilized to heal, too, since you’d have to use such a range of motion to complete your job.
Mushrooms are fine to me. I don’t seek them out, but my husband likes them so we eat them relativley regularly. Beets are fine, too, but I just find them the biggest nuisance to prepare and they’re so messy. My Mom makes pickled beets and I love those, but I have a feeling adding all the sugar to the beets does counteract some of their benefits!
Hey – if the screens work for you, I say go for it! It’s easy to vilify a particular behaviour, but we don’t have to lump everything into one basket. My kids watch a lot more screens than some of their friends, but we also eat supper around the table most nights and do fun family adventures together and walk to school each morning. I think I feel way more guilt than I should. The kids are fine and have a well-rounded life that just happens to include a fair amount of screen time. Life isn’t one-size-fits-all. (And when I look back on it, I actually probably watched just as much TV as my kids do and it just wasn’t a thing. I was outside a lot, but when I wanted to watch cartoons all Saturday morning, my parents never berated me for it)!
I am with you that we buy grated cheese because it’s just so much easier. I have to grate ginger for one of our recipes and I have scraped too much blood into our foods for me to think grating is a fun job. I also buy 100-calorie packs of guacamole every week – they are a huge luxury, but worth it to me as a part of a lunch.
My husband has a huge list of food intolerances (won’t kill him immediately, but make him feel very ill), allergies (that will send him into anaphylaxis), and general dislikes (he is also picky). So everyone sends us cookbooks based on those (oh, look, this is a highly regarded gluten-free cookbook!), so we have two shelves of cookbooks, but I generally only use The Joy of Cooking and a very basic Betty Crocker one. I make substitutions that I need to and we eat the same five things over and over again.
Interesting that you don’t like baked eggs. One of our favorite meals is a broccoli and potato frittata – basically it’s a crustless quiche. It’s easy to make and delicious, but it seems like you would hate it!!
I refuse to grate ginger now (and I even bought a micro zester). I just chop it into tiny pieces.
I’m so sorry for the food challenges your husband faces (and which you face vicariously as well) – I take it for granted that I can eat just about anything and my heart goes out to you for having to navigate food in this way which – in some senses – becomes a health battleground.
Maybe your broccoli and potato frittata would change my mind? Doubtful…I think now it has become a mental hurdle for me and I just can’t even fathom enjoying a baked egg dish. I have a well-rounded enough diet I think I’ll give myself a pass and let myself have an out on this one…
Oooh this is so fun and fascinating! I much prefer finding recipes online but I still have two full shelves of cookbooks! (My mother-in-law loves to READ cookbooks, which I have never really understood. Then again, I always click “jump to recipe” on food blogs, too.)
Like you, I usually stick to the recipe the first time (well, except when it comes to the amount of garlic), but then I adjust it to my preferences. I have been cooking for long enough that I have a decent sense of whether things are going to work together.
Bummer that you haven’t been able to tie your health challenges to a food intolerance. I have a hard time with beans (although I love beans with my whole heart, doused in hot sauce of course) and THINK I have an intolerance to zucchini squash, which is a very weird, very specific thing that I don’t miss enough to try again.
I think a lot of people find it very relaxing to browse cookbooks…but I just don’t. The FIRST thing I do on recipe sites is click “jump to recipe” which makes me feel guilty because there can be some great narrative and writing, but I just want to get to the dang recipe…Also, they also have SO many pictures of the same thing. I don’t need to see the “best” chocolate cookie from 10 different angles on 10 different plates, but some people really enjoy it so, as Ron Swanson would say, “Bully for them.”
I love garlic but it is the one thing I can 100% say bother my stomach. Sigh. That was very disappointing to realize (and definitely cropped up over time because I used garlic ALL the time – basically every single day – and then ended up with weird stomach issues that got SO much better when I cut garlic out). When I had my Meridian Stress Assessment done the woman said I was the first person she had ever seen with a big sensitivity to garlic (it’s usually onions which only bother my stomach if I consume them raw).
whoa whoa whoa. No spicy food? No cheese? No SALSA?!?!?! I need a minute to wrap my head around all of this. 😂😂 You are right. This does horrify me. 🤣
That being said, I have many of my own dietary aversions and they would probably horrify other people. I basically won’t eat any “creamy white substances”, as I like to joke…so no mayo, no sour cream, no ranch/no salad dressings of any kind, generally no sauces (not to be confused with SALSA- because I love salsa- but no “sauces” that contain “dressing like” ingredients), I hate almost anything containing vinegar (so no balsamic/ vinaigrettes, pickled foods), no mustard, no pickles, no cream cheese, no yogurt….I’m probably forgetting things, but those are ‘banned items’ I can think of off the top of my head. 😬 Drives my husband literally insane, because he will eat or at least try basically everything and anything.
I literally was thinking of you the WHOLE time I wrote this, assumed it would horrify you, and am glad you didn’t let me down – haha! Cheese – Salsa – Spicy food! That food makes life worth living for a lot of people!
No mayo? Wow. I can’t imagine; I consume mayo almost every day (that might be a bit much; maybe I should talk to someone about that…) but I know A LOT of people that don’t like mayo, so you’re in good company (I suspect a lot more people don’t like mayo than people that don’t like cheese).
Oh. I LOVE vinegar. Love balsamic and vinaigrette and pickles! I also like mustard and adore cream cheese and yogurt.
We are basically the exact opposite?! I will say, aside from the spicy food and baked egg dishes, I’m pretty open to anything…and I do tolerate cheese, just never seek it out!
This has given me such a great laugh this afternoon!!! We really are total food opposites! Hilarious!!
My husband is your food aversion twin, except for mayo, which he dips french fries in.
How am I – a mayo fanatic – not aware that people dip french fries into mayo? I’ve heard of vinegar (weird!), and of course any reasonable human must add ketchup to their french fries…but mayo. That really is new to me, but of course it sounds delicious!
your response made me laugh Kae! food preference is sooooo individual. I don’t like cheese when it’s not melted, salsa if it’s not in chips, spicy food in certain meals.
in general I don’t like meat or fat, it makes me feel gross. since tracking with continuous glucose monitor, I realized how many times my blood sugar was in a rollercoaster when I ate too much carbs, which is the basis for my vegan diet. Now, I feel my cravings are less frequent when I have bs stabilized, and I sleep like a baby every night.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you own just ONE cookbook that you basically don’t use. Mind-boggling. Cookbooks are definitely a weakness of mine — I pretty much ask for one every Christmas and/or birthday, and I love flipping through them for fun (and, you know, actually cooking from them, too). I’ve done multiple cookbook challenges and am currently in the middle of one now, as per my 101 in 1001 challenge.
My weird thing I don’t like that everyone else does?
Donuts.
Seriously, I don’t get the obsession.
Ha! Literally. Only a single cookbook. It’s just not my thing, but I can appreciate why others enjoy them.
I had a friend in university and she literally had 100s of cookbooks. But she didn’t cook. It was one of the strangest things I have ever seen. I lost touch with her quickly – not because of all the cookbooks, but that definitely hinted at our very different personalities. (As in she had 100s of cookbooks in her apartment at university! It was truly bizarre).
I only like “good” doughnuts. Here in Canada the Tim Hortons chain is famous for their doughnuts and they are so, so meh. I can say no every single time. But in university there was a local diner that made homemade doughnuts and they were perfection. My favourite is, definitely, old-fashioned sugar. Yum. But I almost never eat a doughnut, but a good one tastes delicious (to me)!
I am also horrified to learn that you don’t like salsa. Time for me to make you some pico de gallo in an attempt to change your mind. Or perhaps as an excuse to eat some as a side for my cheesy baked eggs. 😄
I will never steal your Christmas chips and salsa.
Do you like baked egg dishes? I feel like we haven’t discussed quiche before – this needs to be the first topic on our next walk!
I don’t ever follow recipes to a tee, except for pie crust. You don’t want to mess with pie crust. I have cookbooks, but I only use them as jumping-off points, and then not very often. Many of them date from before food blogs on the internet (one of which I used to have) and then I received a whole bunch for free when I was working as a food blogger. I received a couple for Christmas this year, and a few of the recipes have been good jumping-off points.
My least favourite thing, as a vegetarian, is doing anything with meat. HORK. I do cook meat, but I often feel grumpy about it.
Other than meat, I have a huge aversion to celery. I won’t even have it in the house. Just thinking about celery makes me queasy. I don’t love onions, but the guys do, so we have them in the house.
I have never made a single pie-crust (go ahead, be horrified; I know you’re a wizard with pies).
Handling meat as a vegetarian sounds…rough! Celery is a staple for me in a lot of soups. Growing up we ate celery sticks raw – a lot. But I’m not a huge fan of raw celery as an adult. A nice bonus about celery is NO GRATING!
Onions hurt my stomach if they’re raw, so I basically only use them as part of the flavour profile for soups/stews.
My husband is not a big fan of cheese either. He will eat it on pizza, enchiladas, lasagna, etc, but he’s not a big fan of it in general! And I have a friend who absolutely HATES melted cheese except on pizza.
I have a gluten intolerance but that’s my only dietary restriction. It’s a big one, though. I have about 10 cookbooks but only use 3 of them regularly. I do like paging through cookbooks. I am very much a tactile person when it comes to cooking/baking. I hate reading a recipe off a phone so will have my husband print recipes I want to try. Then if it’s a keeper, I put in our recipe binder which sounds similar to yours – everything is in plastic sheets.
I am very unpicky in general. The only food I don’t really care for is mayo. I will eat it if it’s in a tuna salad or something like that, but would never put mayo on something as a condiment, like a turkey sandwich. But I will pretty much eat everything else as long as it is GF!
I can do without cheese in just about every format, but definitely think melted is my least favourite (and CRISPY melted I actually dislike).
Going GF is a big shift, and I know it can be hard to know from labeling if things are actually GF or not.
Mayo is a divisive one. I adore mayo and use it almost daily, but know a lot of people (including some of my siblings) who avoid it at all costs!
Least favourite food? I love all your least favourites! They are all staples in my house 😉 I too love mayo on my chips, delicious. Mine would be baked beans which in the UK are basically haricot beans in tomato sauce (they may be the same) you would usually buy them in a tin and reheat them or eat them cold (that is even worse). Other than that there is nothing else that I would not eat (apart from meat and fish as I am vegetarian).
Favourite meal to serve company? Hmmm I have so many meals I love to cook but I do like to make salads out of anything and everything so I am thinking a buffet/meze type meal with lots of salads using in season vegetables and some kind of protein based dish to go with it.
Least favourite kitchen activity? Clearing up and washing up, I am a very messy cook and often don’t clear as I go. I often am cooking more than our evening meal so it gets very messy….
Do you follow recipes? Not really, the first time I might but often I don’t have the full list of ingredients so I am making substitutions even the first time I cook it, I do this even with baking as I don’t use refined sugar at all, I don’t have it in the house.
Do you like reading cookbooks? Definite yes! I had to go and count mine to find out how many I have, 34 it would seem. Some are over 30 years old and falling apart others are less than a year old. They are all well thumbed and covered in splashes of food. I have three small shelves which are full of books there is no room for anymore, if I want a new one I have to get rid of one.
Do you eat like your childhood self? Probably not as I no longer eat meat and fish, I stopped eating these when I was 20 so have not eaten them now for more than half my life.
Salty or sweet? Salty I really do not have a sweet tooth at all. I prefer savoury food to sweet.
Food Sensitivities? Tea and coffee. I would be no good at your favourite meal at all. Coffee is a big no no for me, a micro amount in a cake makes me really ill. I used to manage my Crohns Disease through a more restricted diet but these days I am able to eat anything and I have no symptoms now. I eat a limited amount of wheat/glutenous flours as that seems to be better for me but I am not strict with it when at other peoples’ houses. I also eat no refined sugar as it gives me horrendous headaches these days and I feel like I am wading through treacle if I do eat it.
Do you every eat in front of screens? No family meal times are my favourite time of day, and the only time we are all together during the week.
Favourite Convenience foods? I though bought grated cheese was covered in lots of ingredients to keep it fresh? It might be different in Canada but here it tastes so different and if I am honest pretty revolting. I think it would have to be mayo or pesto sauce when the ingredients are not in season or expensive to buy.
Another great post!
34 cookbooks!!
I love baked beans (prefer homemade to canned, but canned will do in a pinch). They do upset my stomach so I don’t make them a lot, but they are SO delicious to me (once I add mustard).
I mostly avoid coffee these days and do have to be careful how much tea I drink as over time it can start to really upset my stomach.
I’m not a big cheese fan to begin with, but the grated cheese over here tastes about the same (it tends to dry out a bit, but since it’s typically going on something that’s going to be baked – like a pasta dish – it ends up getting moist again.
I enjoyed reading this. I am definitely a salty person with a sweet tooth. I think 9 out of 10 times, I would choose a salty snack over sweet, but I also think ice-cream beats all the chips and crackers in the world 🙂
I don’t recall ever eating dinner in front of the TV growing up, we always had our meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) at the table and I think it’s an important family ritual, if this is the only time of the day that you get to spend together. But I also think that eating in front of the TV is not as bad as people make it out to be… like you said, if you’re around Jon all day, eating and watching a movie is another way to spend quality time without much talking!
I like the idea of cookbooks, but I can’t say that I’ve cooked a lot of recipes from cookbooks. There’s usually just a handful that I would even want to attempt… LOL I have a binder like yours (with the protective sleeves) for recipes that I gathered from family members or the Internet. I also have a (handwritten) cookbook where I collected all the recipes from my Mom/family.
I really should get more handwritten recipes from my Mom. Most of my favourites I have typed up, but it would be wonderful to have some of the best ones handwritten for memory purposes. Her handwriting is so distinctive.
My Mom has a bunch of recipe boxes, and I love flipping through those to see recipes my GRANDMOTHER wrote out because, again, to me her handwriting is so distinctive.
Oh, how interesting to see how different everyone is. Even though I know we’re all our own unique selves, including in the kitchen! (Or perhaps most especially? Food is SO personal…)
I love salsa. I think it should be a required food group, and I eat it at nearly every meal.
I never eat mayo. Ever. 🙂
I eat dairy and VERY occasionally fish (usually when it makes someone else’s life easier, like my mom’s when I am visiting). Otherwise I’m veering pretty close to vegan these days and would like to get there eventually.
So no meat, no poultry (I’m actually allergic) no pork.
I love how organized your recipe collection is… and how curated. Mine is a hodge podge of some printouts and handwritten cards from family and friends (treasures in their own right) as well as a huge assortment of things I will never make in Evernote. 🙂 I should clear out any that haven’t made the shortcuts list, on the theory that if they’re not there then it’s highly unlikely i will EVER eat them! 🙂 Thanks for giving me a goal!
I know I’m kinda an odd duck out on the salsa. It’s just not my thing! Now mayo, on the other hand, really is my thing but I know it is so commonly avoided, I’m an odd duck out for liking it so much.
I’d actually like to do another pass through my current recipes. The book is getting a bit messy again – I take things out of the binder and then slide them into the front sleeve when I’m done and things don’t always get filed properly again. But, overall, it’s a great system for me. I think I’ve been using a binder for almost a decade now; before that it was just a notebook I had filled with my favourite recipes. I used to enjoy printing off “to-try” recipes, but now find it overwhelming to see all these recipes I “want” to try which can pile up. For the most part now, if I want to make a new recipe I will just cook from one off my phone at first and then if it’s good enough to print, I’ll do that and file it.
Let me know how clearing out your own “to-make” list goes.