When we arrived in New York, we had one small book case filled with the treasured reads that we loved enough to pay to ship from England to America. There were about ten cookbooks and forty novels. But after a year as a food blogger with a growing passion for food, the bookcase was heaving.  Books were stacked on top of the case, on the sides. There were some new novels in there, but at some point in the previous year it became overwhelmingly a collection of cookbooks. As I was packing up our books during our move last week I realized I had never cooked out of many of them. Maybe a recipe or two from a book here and there.

Then, as I packed up the kitchen, I pulled a dusty purple folder from the top of my fridge. I had forgotten it was there. Inside were all the recipes I had pulled from the pages of magazines, newspapers and the internet when we lived in England. I had only made a few of those recipes too. I thought of all those evenings I had struggled for inspiration and kicked myself for not pulling out one of my cookbooks or remembering this folder.

My friend Amber who was helping us move also has a blog called Bluebonnets and Brownies. As we dusted off all the books and put them in boxes, she said she had been considering starting a series of posts based on recipes from old cookbooks and recipe boxes:  recipes you always meant to make, recipes you used to love, but haven’t made in years.

Her idea inspired me. I cook a lot from blogs, but I wanted to crack the spine of some of these books and makes use of some of these recipes I’ve found in magazines.  So this week I’m starting by making this Squash, Ricotta and Sage pasta bake from BBC Good Food Magazine.  Stay tuned—in the future I hope to be sharing more of my “forgotten finds.”