You know the phrase - it goes something like - "Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice, shame on you".  Well, today it is "Shame on me".  Not following?  Let me explain.

A while ago I posted "Oops - dinner is gonna be late" which listed a bunch of my dinner preparation mistakes that resulted in late dinners. My hope was to learn from the past, yet today I committed Late Dinner Sin #3:

3.  You glance at the recipe in the morning to confirm you have all the ingredients.  But when you start cooking in the evening Step 2 says "Marinate 8 hours".  Result:  Going out for dinner.

Sadly, not only did I glace at the recipe this morning but I also went shopping for all of the necessary ingredients.  Yet, somehow (perhaps because I didn't fully read the recipe), this evening when I went to prepare it I was assaulted with "Refrigerate 8 hours or overnight"  at the end of the first paragraph in the recipe. Gee -  not only did I commit Late Dinner Sin #3 but I did it nearly perfectly!

If you're interested our luscious dinner tonight was going to be "Caramelized Onion, Swiss Chard, and Fontina Cheese Strata" using Swiss chard from the farmers market and the remains of my garden's yield of Walla Walla onions. 

Sigh - looks like we're going out tonight! At least I know what we're eating tomorrow night...

The hunt begins... Just a sampling of my recipe stash.

Why Recipe Track & Tag?  Each month I spend hours going through cooking magazines and cookbooks picking out recipes I want to make.  I dog-ear the pages for recipes that look good and I cook many of them.  I have the best intentions to keep track of theses recipes but ultimately life happens and the next thing I know the recipes are lost never to be found again!  Where are they?  Some are hidden in piles of cooking magazines and books in my house or possibly even in my car, some are left at friends or relatives houses, and sadly some are even accidentally thrown out.   I call this "recipe oblivion".  

 I've wasted hours trying to find recipes that are in "recipe oblivion".  Usually the hunt goes something like this:

I start by trying to remember where I last saw the recipe and when that doesn't work I ask myself when I first cooked it.  If it was hot when I cooked it then I reason that "the recipe must have been published in the summer".  What year I ask myself?  "Hmm it was probably last year".  That means it would be in the June, July or August issue from last year.  Next I try to figure out which magazine the recipe was in thinking "it was a pretty quick dish so it probably wasn't Gourmet - so I'll start with Cooking Light June of last year."  But after searching all of those issues I typically still won't have found the recipe.  Sometimes that's because even though I cooked the recipe in the summer the recipe actually came out in the spring. Or maybe I really didn't cook it in the summer. Or maybe the recipe really was in Gourmet.  Or maybe I just missed it when looking through the issues (the first 10 times!).  Sometimes I even recruit Husband to help in the hunt and sometimes I simply never to find the recipe. UGGGG! 

So, what is the solution?  I've tried lots of different schemes to keep track of my recipes including recipe cards, lists on my computer and actually tearing the pages out of the magazines.  I still lose the recipes.  At one point, I even bought software to keep track of recipes.  But re-entering the recipes was tedious.  These days some websites will let you keep track of their recipes or re-enter other recipes but it's a pain to go to multiple sites and/or re-enter recipes.  What is needed is a single place to keep track of recipes from any magazine, any cookbook, or simply anywhere!  And that is exactly what Project Foodie is doing! We are providing a single destination to easily keep track of all your favorite recipes.  We're still working on improving and adding to Recipe Track & Tag so you will see changes happening over time.  But give it a try and let us know what you think… help us help you by shaping the system to your needs. Necessity is the mother of invention and Project Foodie is what I needed to invent to help with all my lost recipes, hopefully it's what you need too.

Today is National Ice Cream day and July is National Ice Cream month.  But who needs an official day or month to know that ice cream is the perfect treat?  Certainly not me.  In fact, Ice cream and I are lifelong friends.  Ice Cream has been with me through summer heat, spring rain, and even freezing winters.  No matter what I’ve been doing or where I’ve been Ice Cream has always been close at hand.  We met when I was a baby and my parents discovered a spoonful of Ice Cream put a smile on my face.  But Ice Cream didn't stop there; no Ice Cream had many ways cunning ways of getting close to me to nurture our relationship.  After little league softball games Ice Cream would ensure all the team members had a great celebration even if we lost the game!  In grade school, Ice Cream would hide between two cookies forming a wonderful handheld treat that I could enjoy in the middle of the school day.  During summer break, Ice Cream would hitch a ride on a musical truck and frequently stop by my neighborhood to say hi.  And a couple of times during visits to see my older brother, Ice Cream even took over control of my sister-in-laws car forcing her to drive to the nearby Ice Cream parlor.

Over the years Ice Cream was very successful in getting me addicted well before I even began working at an ice cream shop in high school.  Initially, my mother thought that working in an ice cream shop would sever me and Ice Cream.  Perhaps she though being covered in the sticky remains of all the ice cream I served would cause me to grow tired of Ice Cream.  How wrong she was!  No matter how covered my arms were from scooping ice cream cone after ice cream cone for hours on end during busy summer weekend shifts I still craved Ice Cream - and since it was now only an arms reach away I could easily indulge.  Fortunately, my wrists didn't like scooping the frequently very hard Ice Cream and alas I was forced out of the ice cream store.

I thought I might lose touch with Ice Cream when I went to college since I moved to one of the coldest spots in New York state where it was frequently no more than 20 degrees below zero when I walked to my 8am classes.  Yet Ice Cream still found me - with the help of two buddies named Ben & Jerry that is.  Later Ice Cream cultivated friendships through the sharing of an amazing dessert with chocolate Ice Cream sandwiched between two hot homemade chocolate and peanut butter chips topped with hot fudge and whipped cream appropriately called “The Ice Screamer”.

My love of Ice Cream grew even more when I met Husband and found he to loved Ice Cream (clearly a sign Husband was the perfect man!).  But sadly these days Ice Cream and I don't see each other very much.  Oh don't get me wrong I still love Ice Cream but not the fat.  Luckily, Ice Cream introduced me to some close cousins - Frozen Yogurt and Frozen Soy Milk.  They aren't quite as rich as Ice Cream but since they are in the Ice Cream family I've grown to love them.  I've even recently started making my own Ice Cream Cousins thanks to Peggy Fallon's new Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts cookbook that has a wonderful assortment of frozen yogurt, frozen soy milk, frozen ice milk and light sorbet recipes.  But today, in honor of national ice cream day, I'm going back to my good friend Ice Cream for a little reunion - just to see what the first frozen love of my life is doing these days...

Do you lose track of recipes you've picked out from cooking magazines?  Have you accidentally cooked the same terrible recipe because you forgot you tried it before?  Are you cooking the same old recipes because you forgot about or lost track of new ones you picked out?  Are you missing great recipes that you wanted to cook because they're buried in a pile of magazines somewhere? I know I have done all of these things - it's frustrating, it's annoying and it wastes my time!  That's why I'm really excited to announce that Project Foodie is here to help with our new Recipe Track & Tag.

Project Foodie recipe Track & Tag lets you easily keep track of recipes from your favorite cooking magazines.  The recipes are easy to find.  You can view them by individual magazine issues, by specific categories or by searching for an individual title.  But best of all you don't need to re-enter recipes and recipes from multiple magazine publishers are available, in one single place.  As of today you can keep track of recipes from Cooking Light, Bon Appétite, and Gourmet magazines.  We'll have Food & Wine recipes available soon and many others in the near future.  

Track & Tag is more than a recipe box.  You can also personalize the recipes you've tracked.   You can rate recipes, add public comments, add personal notes and most importantly add "tags".  What is a tag?  Well, a tag is a word or phrase that describes a recipe.  Tags help you organize and categorize your recipes so that you can find the recipes you want quickly.   For example, let's say you've picked out several recipes from the most recent issue of Cooking Light as recipes that you want to try.  If you tag these recipes with "try" then when you look at the recipes you've tracked you can easily find all of the recipes you want to try because they'll be grouped together under the "try" tag.  Tags allow you to describe recipes the way you see them!  Even better, when a new issue of a magazine comes up, you can look at that issue's recipes on Project Foodie and easily tag the recipes you're interested in.

Each recipe can have as many tags as you want and you can change the tags whenever you want.  Going back to one of the recipes you tagged as "try".  What happens after you've cooked it?   If you liked the recipe maybe you'll want to tag it as "favorite".  You also may want to add other tags to the same recipe such as "quick-n-easy",  "husband-favorite", "kid-friendly", "hot&spicy", "cheesy" and so forth.  If you hated the recipe you could mark it as "DoNotMakeAgain" so that you'll never accidentally make it again!  Add as many tags as you want.  What about a tag for "DinnerWithBobAndMary" so that you don't cook the same thing twice when your friends Bob and Mary come over? In fact, the more tags you add the more personalized your recipe plate will be and the easier it will be to find what you want to make.

Track & Tag is just the beginning of the solutions to your daily food problems that Project Foodie plans to provide.  I invite you to give Track & Tag a try and let us know what you like, what you don't like, and what other things you want so that we can make Project Foodie into the food destination you're craving. We have many new features planned to make Track & Tag easier to use, but it's so useful already that I thought everyone should get a chance to start using it.