One winter in my early 30s I lost my job and became obsessed with writing lists. There\u2019s no better time to manically scribble extensive bulleted notes of everything you have to do than when you don\u2019t, strictly speaking, have anything to do. The list itself becomes the thing to do.<\/p>\n
At the time, my life lacked much natural structure, so I made up tasks that gave it shape\u2014and I wrote them down in brightly colored gel pens. As part of this obsessive documentation journey, I began making lists of every movie I watched, book I read, and, most importantly for our purposes, every recipe I made and restaurant dish I ate.<\/p>\n Emily Johnson<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n What started as a way to impose structure became a lovely soothing ritual. In particular, to my fellow home cooks, I\u2019d recommend keeping a recipe diary. Documenting the foods I make at home has helped me become a better cook in a few interesting ways.<\/p>\n In seeing what I\u2019d eaten actually written out and amassed into a catalogue, I found that I was naturally struck by new ideas for meals and flavor combinations. On a regular Tuesday, I wasn\u2019t going to flip through an Ottolenghi cookbook for inspiration, but I could be inspired by my own emergency meals. All laid out in one place, I could see how they played off of each other, and wonder about new directions to take them in. What if, for example, I combined the spicy saut\u00e9ed broccoli I\u2019d eaten over rice with the sweet potato and tahini I\u2019d eaten last week? Keeping a recipe log allows you to cook from, and experiment with, your own recipes, much like you would with a cookbook you\u2019ve become comfortable with.<\/p>\n The restaurant portion of the journal was more horizon broadening. Keeping a log of dishes I\u2019d eaten out inspired me to recreate the ones I\u2019d loved. Sometimes I\u2019d try to recreate them in their entirety, but sometimes I\u2019d simply steal a flavor idea, like pairing a harissa paste with avocado. And sometimes I\u2019d copy a new-to-me technique, like cooking cabbage with a savory caramel sauce filled with mustard and parsley.<\/p>\n And then, there were times the journal helped me to cook more elaborately. When I hosted, I would write out my whole menu, grocery list, and a prep checklist. The journal was a useful tool for getting organized for, and excited about, a party. I\u2019d write the recipes I\u2019d used and the cookbooks or websites they came from, who came to dinner, and little notes about how everything went over. As the year went on, I\u2019d repeat recipes that worked for new occasion dinners, making small tweaks that I could track in the diary with notes in the margins. It was fun and useful to have a log of the ways I\u2019d made and changed recipes over time, and the menus I\u2019d slotted those recipes in, so I could see how I\u2019d evolved as a cook and which menu pairings worked best.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Food](\"https:\/\/assets.bonappetit.com\/photos\/69bd5d9240b02938984ff5bb\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/food%2520journal%2520with%2520recipe.jpg\"\/)
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