Controlled Chaos
I did something last night that I have been doing a couple of times a week for years…I leafed through a huge stack of loose recipes, a mix of magazine and newspaper clippings, and butter-stained white notebook paper with hastily jotted sketches of recipes dictated over the phone by a friend. I was searching for a Skillet Lasagna recipe for my 22-year-old step-daughter, Ally. She took one look at this chaos, held together by a large tattered envelope and insisted on establishing order…immediately (she’s pre-law). 
I stood by to occasionally offer a suggestion of category for the hard-to-define dishes. When you think about it, when you allow someone to rifle through your recipe file, you realize what an intimate act it is and how much it reveals. What does it say about you when you’ve not yet attempted a recipe that you clipped four years ago, but you can’t bear to toss it out? Or scads of recipes involving the same ingredients (kale, brussel sprouts). Then there are the hand-written notes that sound kitchen-gooberish, and the bad mispellings (kaluah?) My mother once observed that I was not very controlling. My parents had come to visit and help when Pirrie was born, and my father desperately needed something to do. He took to the garden and I was very happy to confer on him utter authority over the yard. In general, I really like order. Today, the snow boots are lined up, envelopes for Christmas thank-you notes are already addressed (I know…disgusting!), photos are in albums. Yet…the recipes have eluded me. It’s a little like the garden, which I treasure, use and enjoy, but I am happy to concede control. And happy to offer the recipe for Skillet Lasagna which I adapted from one adapted from Cook’s Illustrated, printed in the Oregonian!
