Another Long-Term Project - Food

Sometimes during my luteal phase when I know there's no chance I could be pregnant I play a game where I try to take note of all the symptoms I'm feeling. My hope is that maybe it will help me offset the craziness that I'm sure to experience when I'm in an actual 2ww. I have my doubts about that, but anyway during the most recent luteal phase (which was one of the strangest yet), I was noting symptoms as usual but I began to think a lot more about the food I was eating - wondering if it was something I could or should have if it were an actual 2ww. Suddenly those inorganic strawberries I was consuming seemed a lot less healthy and lot more pesticide-ridden.

This got me thinking of all things food-related and from there I realized three things - 1. I should probably bust a move on my recipe project 2. I have no idea how to tell if a homemade meal is healthy or not (beyond the basics of sugar = bad, veggies = good, etc.) and 3. When I actually am TTC I will be living on my own and therefore have complete control over groceries and meal planning.
I don't really feel I have time to research the second part right now, and obviously the third part will have to wait, but I can tackle the first part. So, onward to my recipe project.

Over the years I have acquired several cookbooks and two binders full of recipes torn from magazines, the newspaper, and printed from the internet.

My recipe binders

I had so many dessert recipes I ended up getting a separate binder just for them. These two binders are yet another project of mine and my ultimate goal is to whittle them down to just the recipes that I really look forward to making and eating.

Recipes binder on top, Desserts binder on bottom

I took these pictures a while ago and the Recipes binder is actually fatter now. Each page is double sided and many pages have more than one recipe on them. I've never bothered to count how many I have but I know I could easily make something new every day for a year and never repeat a recipe. Maybe even two years!
I've already done several recipes and thrown out the ones I didn't care for, but my binders never seem to get smaller! So I guess while I have a bit less school and a bit more time I am going to try making as many of these as possible. I do enjoy cooking and baking and I know my mother appreciates a break from the kitchen every once in a while, so I guess I will spend at least part of this summer slaving over a hot stove/oven/BBQ grill!