These days, I find myself spending a lot more quality time in my kitchen. I’m either prepping food for the week ahead or starting meals from scratch. I’m always trying out some new recipes (on the fly, mind you) and wishing I had a recipe planner to keep track of all of them.
At some point, I do write them down – on random pieces of paper. The problem is that I scatter them among my cookbooks or tuck them away in notebooks. And so, they eventually get lost in the shuffle.
Exhibit A: A Missing French Recipe Leads to Better Habits
While I was conducting research in France for grad school, I wrote down on a white piece of grid paper, with regular, non-permanent blue ink, an amazing recipe for Tiramisu, my host was preparing in front of my eyes. When the dessert was ready to eat, the flavors that hit my taste buds blew my mind. Compared to it, the U.S version tasted like cardboard!
I brought back that piece of paper with me to the US unscathed. I was pretty proud of myself when I went on to re-create this most venerated recipe – maybe a couple more more times after that?
What happened next still pains me to this day. That precious document:
- got partially wet,
- then partially obliterated,
- then disappeared for a long, long while.
Only half of the instructions remained. The most important parts were gone. Somewhere between 2003 and 2005, the tiramisu recipe finally got lost through the sands of time.
Years later, I finally stumbled upon “The Little Big Cookbook,” completely by accident. Lo and behold, after a close inspection, a Siamese twin of the French Tiramisu recipe was right there on page 754! I immediately bought the book.
So now, several decades later, I can report, with some satisfaction, that this cookbook is still in my collection. Every time I need a little pick me up, I make this exact Tiramisu recipe. Want to bring something fancy-shmancy to a potluck? I make this recipe. Want to have friends over? My French tiramisu rules.
Exhibit B: Enter the Weekly Recipe Planner & Blank Recipe Book
Ergo, in the “Weekly Recipe Planner” I recently published, I intentionally added 15 blank recipe pages to write in my own recipes in a pinch. That way, all those elusive family, heirloom and random awesome recipes I come across during my lifetime, will never be lost.
There’s a famous saying that goes like this:
“the best time to invest was yesterday but the next best time to invest is today.”
-Unknown
Right now, I’m already imagining how I’ll invest my time, capturing in this “Weekly Recipe Planner,” my own food creations and all the pesky, elusive family recipes I can remember. For folks who tend to lose things easily, that’s an excellent solution, right?
Exhibit C: The Trick’s in the Pantry
This well-organized, weekly meal planner, peppered with illustrations, is an elegant, step-by-step workbook, with generous space to plan healthy meals for a week or more.
When designing this weekly meal planner, it was important to make it budget-friendly, as well as a time-saving kitchen tool with a blank recipe book section. The planner is meant to help folks who love to cook and want the option to try out new recipes each week. The weekly recipe planner is also a good fit for cooks who also have a strict food budget and even less time.
The trick is to thoroughly shop in the pantry first. Then, plan all the week’s meals AROUND your pantry finds and your favorite recipes. Whatever ingredients are still missing, you shop at the grocery store. And voila!
Exhibit D: Recipe Planners & Notebooks
The weekly recipe planner and weekly meal planner notebook is now available on Amazon. The publisher, Chicken-of-the-Wood Press, currently offers five different cover designs:
With the induction of Soup Joumou, a national Haitian delicacy celebrating freedom and the Haitian independence day (January 1st), into the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, I was, once again, reminded of the importance of having a safe place to document your own family recipes and culinary discoveries.
SO… VIVA HAITI & BON APPETIT!
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Resources
- Read More about the titillating story behind the Haitian freedom Soup Joumou. I think that Epicurious has an excellent article about the story of the soup, which is now part of humankind’s heritage.
- Try your hand at a popular SOUP JOUMOU RECIPE
- Find the lost Tiramisu recipe in the “Little Big Cookbook“ by McRae Books (Anne McRae)
CONTACT
- Contact me here:
- Chicken-of-the-Woods Press is a brand of United Wanderlust.
- United Wanderlust is the official destination for the art prints and original art of watercolor artist Patricia Jacques.
- Patricia Jacques works as a food illustrator, book illustrator and product designer working with food and travel clients, with a slow food, slow life and slow travel interest.
