Cooking and scrapbooking are my 'things'. My passions. I guess I would also include listening to music here.
I am the kind of person who has a huge cookbook collection. I am the kind of person who gets excited when I find a hard-to-source ingredient. I am the kind of person who starts thinking about what I can cook for dinner when I wake up. I am the kind of person who makes everyone dinner when we are away with friends. I am the kind of person who makes her own almond milk.
I don't mean to sound like some domestic goddess, it's just what I love.
Today I was reading an old cookbook while waiting for my kids at guitar lessons (I am the kind of person who takes cookbooks to read while waiting for my kids).
Rachael Ray: My Year in Meals is part food diary/part cookbook and documents everything Rachael cooked and ate over a year period with all photos taken by her and her husband. She has a monthly calendar with all the meals in it then goes day by day with recipes and notes. It's so cool to see what she whips up after a busy working day.
Sitting there, I got the idea to make my own My Year In Meals book.
That might seem like a huge undertaking but I'm already kind-of doing it.
For years I've kept a dinner diary (on and off) of things I'm cooking, inspired by Jenny Rosentrach of Dinner: A Love Story. Her food diary is amazing - here's her post about it. (I also LOVE her mother's Post Feast Analysis System. These are my people).
I also take a lot of food & cooking photos. I even have a separate instagram account just for food (HERE).
So it's just a case of bringing the two together in a simple way. It would be a lot of work but also really valuable to me.
I started sketching out some simple template ideas when I remembered I'd already made a template that would work well for this - my abandoned Project Life template. So I started putting in some words and photos this evening and I think it will work.
My plan is to try and do a digital spread every week to be printed as an 8x10 photobook.
I'm not going to note down every single thing we ate in a week, but I'd like to document the main things I cooked (or ate out). My regular food diary with some photos added in. I'm not including recipes either.
Adding another year-long project to my workload might seem a bit bonkers, but this really is a passion project. I will love this book forever if I can pull it together.
I'm starting this week - I don't believe year-long projects have to start in January or even on the first of the month. Rachael's book starts in April so she obviously says it's OK :)
I'm calling my project "My Year In Food". Love it when two hobbies collide!