Cookbook Guilt

My poor cookbooks are feeling unloved, I just know they are.  They remind me of  toys that have been outgrown and set aside. Nope,  I haven't stopped cooking (yet). I use the internet now, it's so much easier to find what I am looking for on here. 

Before http://www.allrecipes.com/, I spent hours looking through the books, figuring out which recipes were worth a try. Now after keying in the ingredients I want and those I don't (some people in the house will not eat black olives or mushrooms), I do a quick search, look at the ratings and reviews and voila; decision made no muss, no fuss, something new and different.

Well, to be honest there usually is a fuss, or at least a grumble or two.  We, (I use the "we" loosely) do not like change in the Cagle household. "We" prefer to eat the same things week in, week out.  As chief cook, I am, in the words of former President Bush "the decider" and at least once or twice weekly, I put a new dish on the table.  Sometimes I follow the recipe to the letter and others I might tweak. Allrecipes review system  allows users to give advice. One thing that drives me crazy about it is how many reviewers will have changed the recipe so significantly that it barely resembles the original, and then give it a poor rating. People please, if you didn't follow it,  don't comment on it or rate it.  

When I began using the computer to find recipes, it felt like I was cheating on my cookbooks.  The books used to be out on my shelves ready  for daily duty, potluck searches, and special occasion meals. At first it was only every once in a while when nothing in the book seemed to fit the bill, but my usage became more frequent. I would find myself searching just because I could.  After several months when the guilt was more than I could take, I moved the books behind the closed doors of the buffet table cabinets.

 There are couple of recipes that still come from the books and when I open those doors to pull a cookbook out,  it makes me a little sad to see the splattered, stained and worn pages no longer being used.  Most of the meals I make don't require recipes to be pulled anymore, I've prepared them so often that I just know what to do. Most of what I learned about meal preparation came from those cookbooks;  as a new bride I studied the conversion charts, the cooking methods, the terms and tips that were in the back pages. 

I still cherish my cookbooks.  I just can't face them on a daily basis.