Randomness: use it or lose it - cooking magazines

L: magazines to sort R: left side are keepers/right side - off to the library

Bottom: copious use of post-it notes

I used to be a huge cooking magazine collector. I only subscribed to a few – I was more of a cash register impulse buyer. I HAVE TO make that delicious thing on the cover RIGHT NOW! Then I rushed home, flipped through the pages, marking every recipe that interested me, realized it might be harder than it looked and promptly forgot about it as the magazines piled up.

It’s a new year and something about it always seems to make people want to organize and clean out old things (must be the subtle hint from the stores putting all the cleaning supplies and storage bins up front every January). Anyhoo – I pulled out my stack and decided to purge the magazines that I knew I would never cook from. And turn it into a smaller stack that I will never cook from. 😜

It’s always fun to look back though to see what the food trends were. Some of the magazines were from 2009. Spinach was a novelty ingredient that was starting to be available in bags! Quinoa was sneaking it’s way in around 2012 and there seemed to be a big push for barley that never really panned out. Low-fat/low cholesterol were the healthy buzz words and then it shifted to fresh and seasonal the past few years with more international cooking influences as we all became more daring eaters.

I could see that I tended to be wooed by quick, one pot or casserole, crock-pot meals. Basically because, despite my love of cooking magazines, I can’t really cook. I’m getting much better and relaxed about it but I’m still someone who needs a recipe unless it’s for something I cook very often.

I also found a magazine (the Cook’s Illustrated) that had a nibbled corner by my Beau (my dog that I had to put to sleep last year). So I had to keep that one, of course.

And stronger than my cookbook/magazine addiction – I can see that I have a post-it note problem. I could probably fund a small nation if I spent the money there instead of on post-it notes. lol

Well, I thought I would share this with you guys to help spur me on- there’s still one more pile to go. And to be honest, I haven’t read in 3 weeks so I don’t have anything review. Bad blogger!

Do you guys collect cooking magazines? Or maybe beauty or some other kind? When I was a kid my mom saved every single National Geographic magazine. We had a huge wall in our basement FULL of them. Like a decade’s worth. Next to our Encyclopedia Britannica collection. Showing my age there!