Recipe for Disaster

5 years ago I bought the coolest recipe software program for our computer. It came with over 700 recipes, all of which I methodically sorted through, and mostly discarded for one reason or another. I loved the way I could personalize the program and search for recipes by categories I had created. I loved being able to display a recipe on the screen so that I didn't need the cookbook/ recipe on the counter taking up space. And Ken and I became a bit obsessed with taking pictures of our food so that we could add a picture to our favorite recipes. And as a planner, one of my favorite features was the ability to put my menu for a week on a calendar, which then allowed me to see when we had eaten a certain recipe last. I took a bit of pride in knowing that I rarely served a recipe in less than 1-2 months, thanks to my calendaring (I certainly don't have the memory for that).

Over the years I have added my favorite recipes to the collection, recipes from friends, from cookbooks, from online searches. I have personalized many of them, tweeking them to match our desires. And as someone who likes to de-clutter, I began to get rid of recipes written down because I now had them in the computer. I once had a concerned thought about "computer failure" but since we have a back-up hard drive I brushed my concerns away. Until . . .

A few weeks ago, the hard drive on our computer started to fail. Ken bought a new one, and told me to print a few recipes while the computer would be out of commission. Apparently there is more wrong with our computer than the hard drive . . . but that's another story. Meanwhile, I'm running out of printed recipes, so I ask Ken to access the recipe program from our back-up. When he gets into the files on the back-up, all he can find is the 700+ recipes the program came with. Gone are my 150 personalized, mostly not found anywhere else, recipes. And since my memory is horrible, I'll be lucky if I can remember what recipes I had, let alone the ingredients and instructions for said recipes. Ken hasn't given up looking, and I've tried not to despair, just yet, but it's not looking good. From what he's found, it looks like we should have backed-up the recipes separate from the program - weird.

So, I currently have food in my house, bought for recipes, that I only have a vague recollection of. Ken tells me to look at this as an opportunity to try new recipes, but I'm hoping my limited memory can recall at least a few of my favorites. Here's to an unsettled food future.

P.S. I still have access to the recipe program, so I'll start again, and this time, I'll be backing up the recipes.