Wednesday

Discovery of the day: Inspiration overload

I'm struggling to keep track of all the recipes I want to try. I have 13 veggie-friendly food blogs I read regularly and that doesn't count the random recipes I encounter. I've tried saving the links to recipes in draft emails in my Gmail account, cutting and pasting recipes (or even just links) into text files (more Gmail drafts), printing them on paper, 'printing' them to PDF files, and I just can't keep up.

I'm embarrassed to admit that the only thing that's come close to helping is this blog. There have been many many nights I've been completely bereft of ideas and have ended up clicking on the 'Project Weeknight' or 'Recipe' tags to find something to make for dinner.

But that doesn't address the recipes I haven't tried yet, especially the ones I don't save links to because 'I'll remember where I saw it.' Ha! I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday, let alone where I saw that cool-sounding chickpea recipe last week. And we won't even mention the stuff that I don't even remember seeing.

The big benefit of Gmail and the blog is that I can access it at work, where I do all my surfing (Shhh! Don't tell anyone!) and home. Gmail drafts function as a great file storage system -- much easier than emailing myself or trying to remember my USB flash drive. But I have well over a hundred drafts now so it's become kind of like a junk drawer.

I might start another blog, just for me, where I would post the links to recipes, a brief description, and use a system of tags to remind myself what in the heck I was thinking about at the time. Once I cook a recipe I could post it here if it's a keeper, and/or print them out and throw them in The Shoebox for future consideration.

Which brings me to my hard-copy cookbooks and The Shoebox, which is full of printed recipes covered with my scribbled notes. Trying to remember which cookbook a particular recipe is in is maddening, so often I will copy the page, mark it up, then throw it in The Shoebox. Did I mention The Shoebox is crammed full with recipes dating back to the 80s?

Sigh... I think a major organizational project is in order. Unfortunately, overcoming inertia is not my strength. But I'm looking at moving again (4th move in 2 years) so that might just give me the kick in the pants I need.

Too... much... inspiration!