As Southern California is enjoying our wettest month in years, I begin to look for ways to wrap up loose ends and possibly simplify my life.  This is usually a result of “cabin fever”.  The rain has restricted my outdoor activities and has fostered this urge to organize and tidy up loose ends.  This goal of simplifying and weeding out are always on my ‘to do’ list and the funny thing (maybe not that funny) is that no matter how much I eliminate and de-clutter there seems to always be more and more stuff!

That said, I had visited the website Taste Book http://www.tastebook.com/ , a brilliant site affiliated with Epicurious http://www.epicurious.com/ (an equally brilliant site) some months ago.  I diligently uploaded recipes that I had either cut from magazines, gotten from friends, or printed off some of my favorite food websites online.   I selected a cover from an incredible array of beautiful choices and ordered the first 50 pages.  This left me with a credit of 50 pages more that could be ordered any time and added to my customized Taste Book.  If all this sounds confusing let me explain.  This website allows you to create a very professionally published-looking cookbook with all of your favorite recipes.

The pages are high quality card stock that can be wiped clean when necessary.  There are tabs included for each of the categories i.e. appetizer, salads, soups, meat, chicken, dessert, etc.  The cards are sent with the cover (a 3-ring binder) and voila, you have a cookbook that can be titled anything you want—Mom’s Favorite Recipes, Holiday Entertaining, Cookies, etc.  WARNING:  This site is seriously addicting!  Especially if you are looking for something to entertain you when inclement weather has taken the region.

Anyway, back to my ‘clean up, simplify’ story…Taste Book is my weekend, Saturday, rainy-day morning project.  Try it, I think you’ll have fun.  Don’t worry, it’s not too complicated and the folks at Taste Book are very user friendly with their video tutorial and additional FAQ section.  Stay dry!