My "New" Cookbook

Technically, its not really new, but since I just started using it, I think maybe it qualifies as new. My brother, Ethan, gave me a cookbook last Christmas (not the Christmas we just had, but the one before). At the time, I thought it was cool, but like too many things, it got placed on a shelf and sort of forgotten over the course of a few months. I pulled it out this week and started looking at it again. It's one of those red Betty Crocker cookbooks (maybe you've seen them before) and like almost every other cookbook on the planet has the useful pages in the front about cooking terms, emergency substitutions, herbs and spices information, and food safety. And then there are sections on appetizers, main dishes, desserts and so on. But here's the cool part. It's a three ring binder and it has all these extra blank recipe pages for me to put my own recipes on. Actually, there are only a few recipes from Betty Crocker, mostly its supposed to be your own recipes. So this morning I looked up some of the recipes I've entered into the computer when I was emailing them to a friend and printed them off on the pages for this book. There are certain staple recipes that I make over and over and now here they are in one place. I don't have to sift through a hundred other recipes that I've never made and probably never will. For someone who loves to cook as much as I do, and loves my own recipes as much as anyones, this was the perfect gift for me. So maybe it took me a little longer to appreciate this gift than usual, but there's no question it gets a gold star for recipe books.