My Recipe Inspiration

Hi, my name is Kendall.

I am a recipe addict.

("Welcome, Kendall!")

It's serious. Help me!!

No, wait......don't.

I enjoy my problem, thankyouverymuch.

It's time that I fully express the depth of my obsession. This is my recipe confession. As you know, I like cooking. So, saddle up, friends, I've got lots to show.

Oh yah, one quick disclaimer: this is all my opinion, nobody sponsored this. But, oh wouldn't that be nice?? :)

I'm addicted to magazines. Can't stop subscribing, purchasing, reading, loving.

Here's what I get, and what I like about them:

Publications that are focused on cooking: 

Food Network, Cooking Light, Kraft Food & Family, and Pillsbury recipe books

I love the mini Pillsbury books! The recipes come on small cards that are easy to tear out, and everything has a photo (sweet!). I love that these are often focused on a particular thing like: crescent recipes, pizzas, sandwiches, and they have great seasonal books for holidays. Extra bonus, they're cheap!

Ok, Kraft's Food & Family magazine is my new favorite. My Mom introduced them to me and I immediately subscribed. I LOVE IT. I've been making lots and lots of recipes from these magazines lately. They are easy and require few ingredients, AND ingredients that are easy to find, too!

I write all over my recipes, too. How else would I remember what I've tried?

Cooking Light is a classic cooking magazine that I've had a subscription to for years, thanks to my sister!

They redesigned the whole mag not too long ago, and I love the new look and features.

In addition to some really unique, gourmet style recipes, they have quick and easy meals, too. And they're designed to be fairly 'light,' to boot!

Food Network's Magazine is a rival for my #1 favorite thing that comes in the mail.

When it arrives, I want to spend a good hour flipping through it twice, tearing things out and reading every word!

LOVE their cool features like 'he made, she made' - two variations of a basic recipe

Each issue also includes a mini-booklet of 50 ______. I think these are so creative! These are full of interesting spins on basics like eggs, burgers, kebabs, pies, etc.

I am really impressed with the design used in Food Network's mag. Being in the communications biz, I am learning to appreciate a good design in a magazine!

Alright, these are some more magazines I get that contain recipes, in addition to other things. I'm always able to find something delicious in each of them.

Southern Living is the Queen of this category!! I suggest that every woman have a subscription to this. Really. Seriously. DO IT! Sorry, didn't mean to yell.

My Mom and I are often saying "Oh, have you seen ______ in this month's edition!? I can't wait to try it!"

MY total, ultimate magazine weakness is special publications like the above. They are published by magazine companies, but are strictly recipes, no ads. AND it's a collection of their best stuff! Anytime Southern Living produces one of these, I snatch it up, no matter what! 

These are cheaper than cookbooks, easier to store, and have gobs of recipes. I always find them in the grocery story or bookstores. I'm not sure if there's a way to subscribe to them?...Hmmm.

There are some other great ones I couldn't find to picture. I love Better Homes & Gardens special pubs and if you ever see a MixingBowl.com magazine, grab it. It's full of reader submitted recipes and it's fantastic.

Of course, I also have cookbooks. Too many of them.

Hey, I said this was an addiction. I gave that disclaimer earlier; stop judging my excess!:)

Anyway, I have almost maxed out my two cookbook cabinets, clearly.
Let's highlight a few of them:

The Southern Living one above is my favorite cookbook I own. It's amazing. Thank you, Shellie Spicer, for the awesome wedding gift!

Pampered Chef has also published some wonderful little books. The "All the Best" edition is my favorite. I learned how to cook from it one summer when I was home from college. I've made 80% of the recipes in there!

Now, Williams Sonoma has some pretty spectacular, gorgeous cookbooks. All of the above were wedding gifts. But, I find that I never crack them open to cook from them. Why? I have no idea. They're not too difficult or anything. I think it's probably because many recipes list ingredients I don't readily have available in my pantry, and it seems like extra effort to me. I have a feeling this will change over the years as my cooking skills improve. 

In the meantime, WS books look great on display!

P'scuze me, cookbook with no pictures (whom shall remain nameless), I cannot get excited about making recipes from you. You bore me. Blah blah blah, words on pages.

Then there's the cute, specialty cookbooks that I typically see at places like TJ Maxx for cheap. My sweet mother-in-law, Penny, has brought me these before as little happy gifts. I love them! Oh, and my friend Jess got me "Hip Sips" for my 21st birthday, I think!

Phewwwww, are you exhausted yet? I am.

The madness doesn't stop there.

I subscribe to lots of email newsletters from recipe sites:

The above is a screen cap of my Gmail folder titled "recipes". It has a total of 598 recipes saved in it. Yikes.

I can attribute that to the great daily emails from MyRecipes.com. I have preached about this many times on my blog before. SIGN UP, if you aren't already. You won't regret the deliciousness that is delivered daily to your inbox.

They have different categories of daily emails. Above is a "Dinner Tonight" email.

They also have "Daily Indulgence," which makes me drool every day.

I also subscribe to Taste of Home emails...

...and Pillsbury.

There may be more I get, but those are the ones that have filled up my folder so fast!

Then there's blogs. Oh, the endless world of blogs!!!!

Above is a screen capture of my Google Reader. I have a folder just for cooking blogs. If you read lots of blogs and don't have a feed reader, get it set up!! You WON'T regret it. If anything, it's one more thing you'll be addicted to, like me. Here's my tutorial on using Google Reader.

And right below is a clickable listing of all the cooking blogs that I subscribe to and read regularly. Get some ideas! Subscribe! And tell me about ones that you read!

Lastly, where do I keep the many recipes that I tear out of magazines and print from the computer?

In my holy grail of recipe organization. 

My red book collection!

The small one contains hand-written recipes only that come from friends and family. I've talked about it before here. This is the one that is the most valuable and sentimental to me. If there's a fire and I can salvage recipes, I'm grabbing this one.

The big binders have tabbed categories. I bought 2 exactly alike and split the dividers amongst them. One would simply not hold the massive amounts of recipes I collect! And, these are extremely organized in each section, are you surprised? 

There you have it folks, my freak recipe confession.
I'm glad I got that off my chest. 

Now, do you have any idea how hard it is for me to plan for Menu Monday? I get totally overwhelmed sometimes and don't even know where to start. I've flagged, tabbed, bookmarked and starred so many recipes that it makes my brain hurt sometimes. I know, I'm torturing myself here. This, my friends, is why I have trouble making the same recipe twice; I have too many new things I want to make!

After knowing all this, are you inspired to add to your method of getting recipes? What's your go-to place?