When you can’t let go

June 19, 2021 by
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With over 300 cookbooks at my fingertips, plus hundreds of magazines and the internet mere seconds away with its potential for millions of recipes, you might think that the three-ring binder I’ve been lugging around through several cross-country moves would no longer be necessary. You would be wrong – even though I reference it less often than I used to, there are cherished recipes inside that I cannot find anywhere else. A few are family recipes, some are my own that I have developed over the years, and the rest are clippings from obscure, out of print magazines or newspapers. I am not alone in holding onto a binder of clippings and scribbled notes – Charlotte Mendelson writes about her “delusional, wonderful recipe book.”

Mendelson says that most of the recipes contained in her binder are ones she will likely never make, as they are either too complicated, outdated, or are for items like baby food that she will not need again. Even though she still appreciates some of the recipes, most of them “are wildly outnumbered by the preposterously aspirational and the tragically outdated: instructions for a future I never had,” she writes.

Despite its rough shape and eclectic collection of mainly unwanted or unneeded recipes, Mendelson is reluctant to part with the binder because it is like a scrapbook filled with memories. She can reminisce about dinner parties and look back at cooking for her now grown children. Mendelson also thinks the binder tells a story: “Slowly, I’ve accepted that my recipe book is not a work in progress but an artifact, which contains hints and scraps of my former self.”

Category: Antipasto

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6 Comments

  • readingtragic  on  June 20, 2021

    My “binder” is actually twenty two binders of 5,000 plus recipes, along with 350 or so cookbooks, all indexed on Eat Your Books, with photos and links to online recipes, where relevant – my children say that when I die, they want them; I’m sorry that I won’t be there to watch the four way squabble…

  • pokarekare  on  June 20, 2021

    Oh dear, all the recipes I’ll never try! Six binders of sorted recipes, a [large] box of unsorted ones, an enormous pile of magazines that MUST go – after I’ve been through each one and removed anything appealing (unfortunately, charity shops around here won’t accept them). Not to mention over 300 cookbooks, precious, well-worn ones belonging to my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, charity fundraiser cookbooks and souvenir cookbooks from every country I’ve visited -now that was sometimes a challenge!!!! And my children and grandchildren, being X-, Y- , Z- or whatever -gen, are much too computer-savvy to want them. Come to think of it – I even use the internet to find (and save) recipes as well these days.

  • valbe  on  June 20, 2021

    ahh, so why do we keep them? For the memories, of course. Part diary, part journal, part daydreaming, good intentions not yet fulfilled!

  • Jane  on  June 20, 2021

    I have six binders of clippings – one for Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes. I know I will likely never use most of them as I created the binders pre-EYB now that I can find any recipe I need in my huge cookbook collection (or resort to the online recipes if not). The only binder I use is the “Favorites” one where I have extracted recipes I like from other binders so they are now easy to find. I know they will end up going straight into trash when I pass on. Though having spent days clearing all my dad’s filing cabinets recently, I have promised myself I will clear all this before my kids have to do it!

  • lean1  on  June 20, 2021

    You inspired me to go through my recipe clippings. I threw out a garbage bag full of papers and recipes I haven’t made in decades or will never make.Thank you!

  • hillsboroks  on  June 20, 2021

    I have six main binders plus two smaller ones, one just for drinks and the other for cakes. All of them have labeled divider tabs so I can look for that favorite chicken recipe under “chicken”. Every couple of years I go through them and merrily pull out and toss recipes I realize I will never make or now have lost interest in. Slowly my binders are getting less crowded and more of the remaining recipes are favorites I use frequently. I hope that by the time my kids inherit the binders they will just be full of treasured family recipes.

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