"Here Goes Nothing!"

Well, as my Bobchie used to say when putting anything into the oven, "Here goes nothing!"

This blog is an attempt to solve a very definite problem I've identified...

I have noticed I hoard recipes.

Well, perhaps hoard is too strong of a word, but, between online websites where I go find "50 great crockpot recipes", emailed gems from best friends which are currently languishing in the only order I've managed (on Evernote), a binder full of pages ripped from magazines on what to do with arugula, and handwritten scraps from both of my grandmothers, there is very little order to the madness.  It's very hard to search and share, and very hard to find anything.  Last night, I recycled many pages of recipes I had never tried, but that I know have been stuffed into a 3-ring binder for at least a decade.  That's just embarrassing, now that I think about it.  In the process, I found that great coffee cake recipe I had been looking for, which would have come handy for Christmas Morning...which was a week and a half ago.

And then there is the issue of my garden.  Last year, my garden was, in the words of my uncle, a Vegetable Jungle.  I grew corn (!!) in a smallish 150 square foot plot, and I plan to do it again.  The tomatoes grew themselves and very nearly took over.  Because I really didn't know what I was doing, the okra I had forgotten about became woody and inedible... and I had no clue, really, what the hell to do with the 12 fava beans (that's twelve beans, total.  not twelve pods.)  I grew.  I should have grown more.  I should have searched "how to cook fava beans" when I planted them, and printed it out.

It goes without saying that I do enjoy gardening, cooking and baking, but in this twenty-first century world, how I think about Information clearly has to change.  Maybe other people will recognize this in themselves and enjoy what I'm about to do.  Maybe I'll post 3 times and forget I've created this.  Maybe family members will come visit and  Maybe this will give me an outlet for my wacky renaissance brain.

I need the recipes to be searchable / tagged by major ingredients, whether they are "garden friendly" (locally sourced and mostly vegetable), when they are "in season" such as winter stews, whose favorite the recipe may be, and if the recipe is in the handwriting of a relative, I'll add the original.  I'm going to stick as close as possible to "recipes I have tested", but, when it comes to garden planning, and having a repository for important info, that may go out the window.  We shall see.

So, what I'm saying is, please don't expect this to stick strictly to recipes.  I'll probably cross-post "how to make smudge sticks" from another blog, how long to keep stuff in your freezer, and how to do three-sisters planting methods. It's a pretty safe bet you will get to see photos of my garden, because really, I'm thinking facebook isn't quite the right medium.

In any case, I fully plan on giving credit where credit is due as long as I can find it, because seeing re-posted articles on other blogs without crediting the original source just bugs me.  So, whether you are a person or a website, please do politely speak up if I don't credit you.  I can pretty much guarantee it would be an oversight.

And so, Here Goes Nothing!