A good case for writing everything down

The quirks of my filing system and setting fire to my recipe books.

It’s always the same with me. I write something down so it doesn’t get lost, and then when I come to use it, I can’t find where I put it. The intentions were good at least. Writing recipes down over the last twenty years has often eluded me, as in my haste to get on with whatever I was doing, I always believed that I’d remember to do it later, invariably neglecting to do this and then losing that snippet of information forever. Recipes are my undoing, I’ve lost so very many great recipes over the years. I try not to think about it.

I’m also a Luddite when it comes to record-keeping. I still think it’s best to have a handwritten record of all my recipes and notes. Very few of the thousands that I’ve developed and collected over the years are stored digitally, as recipe cards were often easiest at work to give out, file or photocopy. Now don’t get me wrong, my notes app on my phone is absolutely full of descriptions for Instagram, recipes, screenshots and images that I once tried to make sense of in files, but as I add things daily I lose track quite quickly. At least I can use a keyword search. You can’t do that with index cards.

I’ve spent in all honesty, days handwriting notes and recipes onto cards, weeding out those that looked scruffy or were illegible then writing them again every couple of years. I made my hand, wrist and forearm ache by noting down thousands of recipes one week in summer a few years ago. I’m sure the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome I now suffer from in my right wrist is down to this. I’ve never had a PA or had the inclination to type it all into my mac, so now if there’s something I find interesting online I screenshot it, or take photos of recipe cards and store them in my phone.

A handful from thousands

Notebooks are often the best way that chefs record everything day to day in a kitchen, writing as you go, to translate into something legible at a later date, though from the many books I’ve filled over the years, a few were invariably set fire to by irritated Sous chefs that were probably fed up with my relentless enthusiasm, or stolen by some idiot who couldn’t be bothered to keep their own. I’ve even managed to knock a saucepan of reduced venison jus over one book, which then ended up in the bin, stuck together in a jellied clump and way past rescuing. Two of my dearest books were taken from my locker once, by an odious little manager and never appeared again.