Kitchen Goals

One of my goals this year was to get organized in certain areas of my life that had been somewhat swept under the rug, if you will. Let me tell you briefly how I shop for groceries/cook:

Eric and I usually go to Trader Joe's once or twice a week after work. I typically do not use grocery lists, unless we need really important things that I love that I might die without, and absolutely do not want to forget (such as coffee, cream and uncrystalized ginger). Grocery lists would require meal-planning, and that is something I simply do not do. I play it safe and stick to the basics: two or three kinds of meat, a few vegetables, two kinds of cheese, and a few other things I know I will use that week.

I like to cook without recipes (or loosely follow a simple one), using basic knowledge of what tastes good with what. I enjoy cooking this way, and I also enjoy not having to set aside time for meal-planning. The drawback is that, as an amateur cook, my knowledge expands through trial and error. This is something I want to change if I can help it. This is something I can change with something they call: cook books. 

So this year, I am branching out beyond what I know. The safe stuff like: chicken and cream sauces and pizza and hamburgers and salmon. This year, I am going to spend more time in my cookbooks, expanding my repertoire, and getting organized with the help of my new-found love: the recipe box. 

I want my recipe box (that I only just received as a gift on Saturday from Eric's sister) to be something I pass down to future generations, full of the tried and true recipes our family eats for years. Wouldn't that be charming? 

Because I don't plan on shaking my rebellious cooking ways completely, I plan on incorporating this book that my mom gave me in my studies. I still want to learn to cook by instinct, but I also want to make things a little bit easier on myself. I am slowly learning there is no harm in that.

So tell me. Do you cook? Do you cook with recipes, or do you prefer using your instincts? What recipe should I try soon? What is worth passing down to posterity in my recipe box?