My New Obsession

I can admit that I did not get my mom's good cookin' trait. My brother did, but I didn't... isn't that sad? Anyways, I have been really trying to cook since I moved to Hawaii because going out to eat is so expensive. Although I hate to admit this... Nathan is actually quite the chef and he cooks for us most days. When I cook it's like an experiment of a recipe I found. He doesn't need a book of recipes, he's like every person with cooking skills... they have this common sense of cooking and toss a little of this, a tad bit of that, and know exactly how long it should cook and the result is awesome. I don't have that... at all. But I figure if I need to start somewhere, that cookbooks are a good option.
I probably will have to use cookbooks for the rest of my life because I can see myself leaving out an ingredient if I go by memory alone. BUT... I have found the greatest recipe website EVER! So, now I don't think I'll have the impulse of going out and buying recipe books. I have a collection of cook books, some that I've never even made one recipe from. I just love to BUY the cookbooks with the intentions that it will have awesome recipes that I can make, then I store it in the cabinet with such delight and then... never use them. WELL, since I've come to Hawaii I have made quite a few. Just to show you a bit of my cookbook purchasing habit, I moved to Hawaii June 23rd. When I arrived at our condo, I had TWO cookbooks waiting for me that I ordered from amazon, since then I have purchased 3 MORE. So, I have 5 cookbooks that I have added to my collection in a matter of less than 2 1/2 months, not including the many that I have in Texas. I also have an obsession with amazon.com , I can spend HOURS just browsing and reading reviews on all kinds of books and CDs. But I can proudly say that I HAVE been using these cook books and that I've made several great meals.
Well, I might reduce my cookbook purchases, that's if I don't just stop completely. I found this website http://www.recipezaar.com/ it is AWESOME. People upload their very favorite recipes on here and then regular people like you and me go and make it for themselves then go back to the website and write a review on it and say how many stars they give it, and leave comments on any additions, subtractions, or substitutions they made and how it taste. I am so excited about this because it is a plethora of recipes. I mean you can type in chicken and get THOUSANDS of recipes with just chicken recipes. Then I usually type in what I want to search. I typed "tuna" to see all that came up and then I hit sort by: RATINGS. That means they will give you the recipes in order of the ones that got the best reviews to the least. THEN... I discovered that people actually upload their own cookbook with their favorite recipes. For example, for people that actually are really great at cooking and have recipes that have been passed down to them or has great recipes from their mother-in laws, neighbors, co-workers... you name it, they put the recipes under their own cookbook and you can view their personal cookbook of their favorite recipes. I can't rave enough about this website. The only problem is that I spend hours looking at it and saving the recipes but then don't get up to go buy the groceries to make it, haha. But today I am, I have saved quite a few of the ones I want to try and now it is time to try them. I just wanted to share this website because it's awesome and it's like getting thousands of cookbooks for FREE. You can get a membership that let's you save your favorite on their website let's you add notes to those recipes and things like that, but for now I'll go for the free and have access to all the recipes. So, try it out and see what you think! I made a Weight Watcher's Key Lime Pie recipe this week and it was delicious... so they have all kinds of recipes there!