Musings: Addicted to Magazines and Cookbooks

Okay, so I'll admit it, I have a problem. I'm a serial magazine and book hoarder. It's not a new thing, I've been hoarding for years, and I have to say, I come from a long line of book and magazine hoarders.

My idea of heaven is grabbing a spare 30 minutes to peruse my latest (or forgotten) publication with a nice cup of coffee, preferably curled up on my couch at the moment, but hopefully in the future, tucked up on the window seat in my newly renovated kitchen. Now, as I tell my patient husband, you can never have too many books or magazines (except when you move house - they weigh a ton). They provide endless hours of continued enjoyment as well as inspiration.

Many people ask me, "Where do you find recipes?" Like everyone else, I spend hours pawing (and dribbling) over recipe books and magazine articles. In the past, I would see recipes I wanted to try and forget about them until I "found" them again. So now, any recipe I come across that I think I might be interested in making in the future is entered into my Entertaining Notebook with the name of the recipe, where I found it (what recipe book, magazine or URL), and the author of the recipe. I've also included space where I can make notes about when I made the recipe, how it turned out, and what sort of occasion it would be appropriate for.

So here's how the story goes. It's been a trying week. At 5:00pm on Friday afternoon I had given up on work. My latest partially read Country Living magazine (July 2006 issue), and the coffee pot were beckoning. What caught my eye was a recipe for a basic chocolate cake with three options. Now this is not a stroke of brilliance and certainly not something that I haven't heard of before, but it was the ingredients that intrigued me enough to dust off my drywall dusted cake pans and have a bash. It's one of the most simple cake batters I've made in ages and it comes together very quickly without the assistance of any electrical devices or a huge pile of dishes.

So, here's to never losing another recipe or inspiration...