gathering inspiration

as someone that loves to cook i am always gathering inspiration for new meals and treats. i have lots of food magazines and cookbooks stacked around the house that i am constantly looking at for dinner ideas. i even spent my vacation sticking tabs on those books and magazines marking all the recipes i want to try at some point. it was a 3 day activity.

no joke.

it was a labor of love and now i have hundreds of ideas, tabbed and sitting in a bookshelf, that i can turn to when i am planning meals for the week, a dinner for a special occasion or looking for a recipe for a sweet little morsel. i tend to gravitate towards bon appetit, america's test kitchen and food and wine mags with a few sunset mags thrown in the mix.

lately, i seem to be gathering the bulk of my ideas from food blogs. lovely, lovely food blogs. it may be a slight obsession. whenever i stumble upon a new drool worthy food blog i tend to find myself searching it for hours and losing all track of real time. i get so immersed in the land of food that all else just slowly and quietly slips away until its just me and the current object of my affection.

currently, that is shutterbean.

oh shutterbean. how on earth did i exist in this world without you?

i just stumbled upon her a few days ago and since then it has been all shutterbean, all the time. we will be testing out her delicious looking recipes this week,  i already tabbed 3 for dinners this week. we will be having her chickpea and raisin salad, black bean tacos (via orangette) and egg + asparagus gratins. and i will be making her freezer burritos and tossing those in the icebox. genius!