Sometimes we do need (or want) recipes

I've said many times that this isn't a recipe blog.  There are already so many talented chefs and cooks posting tons and tons of delicious recipes online.  Developing well-tested recipes that will yield repeatable results really isn't my thing.  For me, the surprise of seeing how something turns out this time is half the fun of cooking.   However, my kitchen is still filled with recipes and cookbooks.  I love looking at recipes and use lots of recipes as the foundation or inspiration for most of what I cook (even if I don't exactly follow the directions).

My collection includes some family heirlooms, some gifts, handwritten recipes on index cards copied from friends and family, and binders full of recipes I've collected from online sites and magazines.  I've inherited my grandmother's copies of The Original Cook Book of Favorite Slavic Recipes (published by the Holy Spirit Mother's Club in the 1960s) and The Good Housekeeping Cookbook (the 1949 edition). While I might not cook from them very much, they are a lot of fun to read.  For example in the "Pointers on Marketing" section of the Good Housekeeing Cookbook it recommends that "you avoid buying more than family will eat for that meal.  It saves your time, grocer's and next customer's."  It's funny to think that your grocer would be put off by you buying too much!  It also includes recipes for things like gruel, mush, luncheon rice molds, rolled celery sandwiches, and jellied tuna sandwiches.

A little bit more modern, I also have a few titles like 500 Chinese Recipes, Great Lake Effects, Essential Asian Cookbook, and Vegetarian Cooking.  I love Cooking Light magazine and have stacks of issues and recipes binders.

From independent bloggers to well-established sites like Cooking Light or Epicurious, just Google anything you can imagine and you'll find tested recipes that you can try.  You can also try just searching by the types of ingredients you have or want to cook with and see what happens.  Suppose in your house you have carrots, peanuts and salmon.  Type in those three ingredients and you get recipes like grilled salmon topped with a carrot slaw, and grilled salmon with carrots, rice and a peanut sauce.  Type in "radish, spinach, butternut squash" and you get a vegetarian lasagna recipe, a quesadilla recipe, and an Indian stir-fry (to name just a few).  This is a great way to make sure that you use up what you have and also gives you a lot of exposure to different recipes and styles of cooking that over time you can tailor into your own cooking.

For the long-term success and sustainability of home cooking I think you need a little bit of both the bravery to cook without a recipe and some reference material to guide you when you are feeling less inspired and creative.  So go ahead and poke around on a few recipe websites, it won't hurt my feelings.