Magazine Dreams

I own every copy of delicious. (does anyone else find that full stop annoying?) and Donna Hay ever printed. They, along with my Gourmet Travellers and - ahem - Good Taste magazines, are proudly displayed on my kitchen bookshelf in CHRONOLOGICAL order. I'm not joking. I even have little post-it tags on marking my favourite recipes to make them easier to find at short notice (or should I say had; one of my son's current diversions is gleefully ripping them out and crying 'paper!', which sounds more like 'pappa'). Every now and then, when a new shelf becomes full and magazines begin to overflow onto neighbouring chairs, coffee tables and other available surfaces, I consider a cull. I say 'consider', because not once have I been able to part with a single issue. A year ago we moved into a new, larger (read: family friendly) home and one of the things that most pleased me was the amount of built-in shelving I could use for my magazines. Occasionally I wonder what will happen as my collection builds. I admit, I no longer look at recipes from the gone-but-not-forgotten Elle Cuisine (may she rest in peace), or copies of Good Taste pre-2004. I have also calculated, to my dismay, that even if I cooked a new dish every day, it would take me 50 years to attempt every recipe in those mags, and that's without even considering my covetable cook book collection.

Does this mean I am ready to part with any of these precious volumes of gastro-porn? Sometimes I think I might be able to ditch at least a dozen or so of the Good Tastes. Someone once offered to 'take some off my hands'. However, when it came time to give them away, I couldn't do it. As I was about to hand them over, a little voice in my head cried out in panic, "Wait! What if there's a fabulous recipe in there that you haven't tried? Once it's gone, it will be lost forever!" A melodramatic little voice, I know. But still, I just can't help feeling that if I get rid of even one magazine, I might be losing something special. Occasionally my husband, bless, asks what I intend to do when all of the shelves are full. My response is nothing if not predictable: "Build more".

Tonight's dinner, you'll be pleased to hear, is a Rose roasted lamb leg from the latest Donna Hay, followed by a blood orange tart from (for nostalgic reasons and possibly to prove a point) an ancient delicious. Who knows what horror might have befallen tonight's dessert if I had thrown it away?