Recipe cards are a boring find. They're straightforward; they're predictable, and, even though they're in someone's handwriting, it's very possible to find the exact same recipe in a book or on a website. However, because of the handwriting they remain one of the things that I wish I could give back to the previous owner. It's a wonderful thing to be able to go through your Grandmother's old recipes, find something that you want to make, and then try desperately to decipher what she meant by "take it out when the coil pops three times steady." It may feel like you're suffering through making that meatloaf together!
Hand-written, recipe cards are becoming a thing of the past. Sure it's possible to find them in old books (see above paragraph), but when's the last time you wrote one? I know that I went through a phase about five years ago where I felt the need to document some of my funnier recipes (see old blog post), but I would never sit down and record every, single recipe that I have floating around in my head. Why? Because I have the internet. And that, as majestical as it can sometimes be, has made me lazy. If I want to know how to make an appetizer that will impress my friend's friends, I'm just going to type "I want an appetizer that will impress my friend's friends" into the almighty Google. Something will come up. Something always comes up. All hail, Google.
So when you're trading in the family cookbook collection for something more modern, take the recipes out of the books. They're a great testament to what your relatives had to do if they wanted one to stay handy, and they're a nice keepsake to pass down to your kid's kids. Who else is going to write down that info for them? Google? Not yet, anyway.
Not yet.
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