Recipe Box

I can't decide if it is because it is fall and the weather is cooler or if it is because I am now 30 or if it is because I feel creatively starved these days, but I am super excited about cooking, baking, and making every recipe in my recipe box. Each meal is a new adventure for taste as well as an opportunity to either put a check mark on it because it passes the taste test or it fails and I cleanse a bad recipe out of my box that my dad made me. Aahhh, there's the reason...I get to organize the recipe box, cleanse and purge, and understand what I've got. Well, I'm not such a mystery after all. So anywho, so far we have made almond tilapia..winning vote from me, teriyaki chicken...not a fan but one of Ryan's favorites. Pizza Rolls, see picture below, these were pretty good dipped in ranch like any good piece of pizza. Ryan really likes pizza, me not so much after OD-ing on Pizza Hut Pizza while working there in High School for 3 years. I've been in a non-pizza mood for the past decade. So the rolls were good and it received a check mark. We also made snickerdoodles and peanut butter cookies. Now I'm sure that I've made these before, but I didn't know if I had made these particular recipes. These both passed the tests. So far, I haven't been able to eliminate any of the recipes in order to make room for more. I also noticed that my recipe box contains five times the amount of dessert/cookies recipes as it does any other category. What category do you put pasta under? I just flipped around the canning/freezing tab and wrote pasta on the back. I got nothing behind the preserves & jellies tab. Now I have an hors d'oeuvres tab and an appetizer/dips tab. Aren't those the same thing? Apps and hors d....? Are apps less fancy? If it is an hor d'... does it require a doily or must contain fish eggs? I'm not sure. There is nothing behind that tab. I should flip it around and come up with another category like what, I'm not sure. Crockpot foods? Next week we are making ham and potatoes another one of Ryan's favorites from his mama...this recipe card that I wrote down has no measurements on it...hmmm, should be interesting! I don't have that cooking intuition that says, "oh sure, that looks about right". I'm more that gal that says, "am I supposed to drain the beef, cuz the recipe doesn't say anything about draining the beef." Okay, not quite that bad, but pretty close.
As long as I am talking about recipes, one of my favorite dishes since meeting Ryan has been Russian Chicken. I do LOVE it. So good. It makes my mouth water just thinking about it. It is the oddest combination of things and I wish I knew what possessed the person who invented it to put the combination together but thank goodness they did cuz it's yummy in my tummy. So here's the wacky concoction: Russian dressing, apricot jam, and onion soup mix. Dump it over the chicken and bake it. What?! That doesn't even make sense. Why would that taste good? Who would put that all in a bowl together? I'm sure glad they did!!