Despite the fact that I love cookbooks and continue to acquire them at an alarming pace, I don't actually use them much (beyond the pleasure of leafing through them). More often than not, when I'm looking for a recipe, I turn to the internet. After I've found three or four serviceable recipes, I'll cobble together something that most closely approximates the thing I've got in my head.
It's a method that works, but sometimes, I find myself longing for the pre-internet days, when people kept a couple core cookbooks and continually tweaked the recipes, noting their changes in the margins. I fear that the days of much-loved cookbooks (like my mom's Joy of Cooking that is pictured above) are nearly gone and the cooks of my generation won't have a tangible reference at the end of their cooking days.
I especially regret this change because of the pleasure that can be gotten from consulting a trusted cookbook. When it came time to make the cornbread stuffing for Christmas dinner this year, I used the Quick Cornbread recipe from the book above. After the stuffing was completed and dinner was a pleasant memory, I returned to the cookbook to make a note that for the future, the cornbread could use some additional salt if it was going to be part of stuffing (I also added a little herbs? to remind myself that adding some chopped rosemary or sage to the batter would also be a nice thing). It's a comforting thing to know that I've left all who consult that Joy a little helpful cornbread stuffing info.
How do the rest of you document your cooking successes and recipe adaptations?
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