How I spent my weekend

Have I mentioned that we have too much stuff in this house? And that one chunk of that too much stuff is a rambling recipe collection?

This weekend, I took a stab at winnowing that down. I lugged into the family room a stack of roughly 40 dog-eared cooking magazines, all published in fall or winter months, and proceeded to go through and rip out every recipe that either Will or I had ever flagged.

Some of them I had cooked before -- they had tell-tale sauce splatters or coffee rings on the pages -- but never bothered to copy down. Some of them it's doubtful whether I'll ever cook them, like a braciole or salt-baked fish, but I have dreams.

Then there are those that I know it's redundant to clip: How many recipes for molten chocolate cakes do I really need? Still, I rip them out, because this one uses instant coffee powder (oh, is that what that new Starbucks stuff is for?) and that one has cherry topping and still another has an amaretto filling. And some things I can't say no to, like anything with peppermint.

Now I have a 5-inch stack of fall and winter recipes to sort through. When I consider that once I had a 5-foot stack of cooking magazines, well, I'm making progress.