The Problem with being a Recipe Hoarder

I've admitted in the past to my little problem of recipe hoarding.

In fact, this admission prompted my baby sister to consider an article for the publication she works for -- I still don't know if she wrote it. I never saw it. And I'm a religious checker of anything my siblings' write (because they have beautiful prose and wonderful insight).

But I digress.

I discovered a fatal flaw with my tendency to recipe hoard over the Thanksgiving holiday.

You see, most of the recipes I hoard are ones that aren't in the published form -- you know, the ones I got from one of my grandmothers.

This is not to say that my little problem does not extend to published recipes. There have been plenty of times someone has raved about a bread that I've made and I've simply kept my mouth shut as to the easily-accessible origins of the breads tender goodness.

Hey, at least I'm not one of those people that will act like I'm sharing a recipe, but change a crucial ingredient to make their food the best.

One of my non-published recipes (although I'm fairly confident at one time it was published) is my Grandma's White Chocolate Cheesecake with Raspberry Glaze.

It is so good.

I'm not lying to you when I say I've had more than one marriage proposal over the cheesecake.

My sister-in-law requests the cheesecake every Thanksgiving. It's really her only request of me as our two families come together to gorge ourselves on food for the day.

This year, as I prepared to make the goodness, I went in search of my recipe -- you know, just to double check the amount of ingredients I was going to need.

This is when disaster struck.

I could not find the recipe anywhere.

I searched and searched. Then I hung my head in selfish despair.

Who could I even call that would have the recipe?

My grandma passed away several years ago and I typically contact my Aunt Lorelei for such emergencies. However, I knew Lorelei was living out-of-state when my Grandma went through this cheesecake phase (unless it was a recurrence) and I didn't think she would have the recipe.

One of my sisters?

The only one I could think would have it was the sister I gave it to many years ago. But she had just asked me on the phone to make it for her the next time we were together.

I had a real problem on my hands.

Eventually I located the recipe. It was hidden behind a stack of papers of randomly jotted down recipes.

But now who do I share the recipe with? I need to head off another disaster of this kind.

Everyone I could think of is too nice. They'd share the recipe in a heartbeat. I mean, they share recipes with this hoarder all the time.

I have a real problem on my hands.