Ideas Post 18: Vote for a Post |

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I'd told myself I was going to spend today working. I even had the whole day blocked out on my work calendar with what I need to do. But then last night I decided to allow myself one free day this weekend. Sunday I can work (except while I decorate cookies for the Baked Sunday Morning post on chocolate cinnamon chipotle sugar cookies). I haven't had a whole weekend day to spend at home since September, so I spent today catching up on my stack of mail, laundry, Amazon returns, photo organization, cleaning, dishes, blog post drafts, and trying new recipes. It was pretty glorious. I even made time for a jog and a browse through the Savory Spice Shop. Westfield is clearly doing something to my local park - they've drained all the water from the pond, making it a lot less scenic.

Do you follow the Kitchn? A couple weeks ago, they published a post that really resonated with me on how to get more out of your cookbooks. Especially the author's imagery in Tip One:

"I've been in that deep, dark place, sitting on the floor, surrounded by books, wailing to the cookbook gods that I WANT TO COOK THEM ALL. This is where insanity is bred. This is where recipe dreams go to die."

This is basically me, every day. I have recipes I want to try jotted down on notepads, post-it notes, random scraps of paper (including receipts), the marker board on my fridge. I think I might have a problem. Could I find more people to cook for? and more time in which to cook? I'm not convinced that I can choose a single cookbook per week (especially if it's a niche cookbook, like Layered - I probably shouldn't eat only cake, right?), but maybe I could focus on two. I highly recommend the whole post, even if I'm equally unconvinced that I can dog-ear and write in my beautiful cookbooks. That's where torn junk mail and my kitchen notebook come into play.

Luckily for me this week, I have four great contenders for the Wednesday ideas post. And they come from only two cookbooks, which I'll count as progress. I've made them all and like them all, so you can't go wrong.