453. Recipes

The going through the family cookbook was pleasant and interesting but totally unproductive. I found little notes in childish handwriting saying things like 'please do not make this cake I do not like it' or 'make this all the time for me please' and headings with big flourish for desserts. I found tiny squares of papers with lists ingredients (that never got to the mother) and mini-recipes jotted down from memory after birthday parties (at other people's houses) or outings at fancy restaurants.

I could not throw that away.

I could not make that either.

So I went through the cuttings from magazines and the photocopies from way back when dinosaurs roamed our garden and the print-outs when we got the internet. My cookbook is almost a history book!

I threw a lot of that out. Why on earth did I keep a recipe of goat's cheese toast! Must have been the wine - or the kids - or maybe the husband blurring my mind. 

So out into the bin went the goat's cheese toast recipe, the chicken and garlic bread brochettes (I know!), the cocktail recipes (I have many books with only cocktail recipes in them, even one that gives a recipe for appetisers too! The five-hour lamb, the two-minute steak (honestly!). With all my might I chuck into the bin the recipe from a next-door neighbour I use to hate even though the dish was tasty. And the recipe from a school mum. (I'm giving it to you as your son said he loved the cake I made for Edward). Should I dig out her mail and tell her that I never made it because my son didn't like the green cake That made his poo-poo blue - or was it the blue cake that made his poo-poo green?

The bin was now satisfyingly overflowing. The folder was not any slimmer but I did not care. I had found the recipe to make: home-made digestive biscuits! Now there was a challenge!