Adam Lambert Recipe File Project

by @TechnicolorNina, guest blogger

As a welcome-home/housewarming fan gift for Adam, we’re putting together a recipe file for his new kitchen! For those who don’t know what a recipe file is, it’s basically a cookbook in index-card form, with all the cards contained in a file box. See the example at right.

Recipe files have a lot of advantages over traditional cookbooks, including but not limited to:

• you can arrange them however you like because there’s no binding
• you can take out individual cards while you cook—no trying to hold open a book
• as you collect recipes, you can simply put them in your file
• it’s easier to photocopy a card than a page in a book to share your favourite recipe
• if a card gets dirty, you can simply copy out the recipe on a new card—if a book gets dirty, you’re stuck with cruddy pages
• cards can be laminated so they can be wiped clean
• my favourite: if you use waxed paper or clear plastic over the card to protect it, the cover will not fold as it does in a book

The deadline to submit a recipe (or more than one, that’s cool too) is 31 DECEMBER 2010. You can submit your recipe by e-mailing it to me at technicolor_nina@yahoo.com, and I will copy all recipes into the file. Please include the word “Recipe” in the subject line, and provide your name (can be a username or a full name) and location so Adam will know where his recipes are coming from (e.g. “Robinson Family Beer-Basted Ribs, Ninalyn Heil, Erie County, Pennsylvania”)! With a little effort, we can create a file full of delicious stuff from all over the world! (If you really want to hand-write or type your own recipe, e-mail me and we can work something out.)

GUIDELINES I TOTALLY CANNOT ENFORCE BUT THAT WILL PROBABLY MAKE THIS MORE USEFUL IF YOU KEEP THEM IN MIND:

• Adam’s a busy guy. Stuff he can toss in a crock pot is awesome. Stuff he’ll have to spend all day standing over the stove for? Probably not so useful.
• He’s said a couple of times that he’s not big on junk food, so while we’d probably all love to shower him with our grandma’s secret recipe for absolutely amazing pie/cheesecake/sugar cookies, he’ll probably get a lot more use out of healthier stuff.
• Try to pick recipes that don’t require a lot of special ingredients, cooking equipment, or have super-specific anal-retentive directions (like how souffles have to be cooked for X number of seconds, no more, no less, EXACTLY). It’s a housewarming gift for a bachelor who’s going to have his own kitchen for the first time in his life, not Emeril.
• If your family is like mine and goes “measuring cups? What are those?” when cooking, don’t panic—just make the recipe you want to send, measure each ingredient as you normally would (e.g. “a handful of rolled oats”), and before you toss it in the mix, put it in a measuring spoon or cup. I’ve made recipe files before for friends this way and they say their results from the measured-out versions are great.

And finally: I can’t correct recipes I’ve never made, so double-check to make sure you have EVERYTHING in your recipe before you send it.

Feel free to spread the word —the best part of a recipe file is getting recipes from a variety of sources, so the more, the merrier! I can always buy more file-cards if we need them!

Thank you for participating!!

Side note: I don’t have a job right now, so if you feel like pitching in a dollar or two via PayPal to help offset the cost of a recipe file and shipping, PLEASE let me know. I’m going to have to shovel a lot of walks for this one and snow doesn’t seem to be in the cards here right now. I’ve handled group monies for projects through my local anime convention, so it’s nothing I haven’t done before. Not saying you have to, just saying it’d be really nice, because I’m beyond glambroke. Any support will be gratefully acknowledged.