If you’ve got a passion for a hobby you really can’t pursue for one reason or another, raise your hand.

My hand is in the air.

When time allows, my hobby and therapy is cooking. Between work and tennis, both of which are essential to my mental and physical well-being, and life in general, there’s not much time left for cooking (which may be why I’m such a nut case).

Why do I save the Taste section of the Sunday San Antonio Express-News every week? Why do I clip recipes from the Wednesday Corpus Christi Caller-Times? Why do I rip recipes from magazines in doctors’ offices (Yeah, it’s me. Don’t get frosty with me. I have my standards. I only take them if the magazine is five years old or older) Why do I have close to 100 cookbooks? Why do I have multiple folders containing recipes on my laptop? Why have I bookmarked the Epicurious and Food Network Web sites? Why do I subscribe to food magazines?

There’s not much time for watching TV, either, but when I do, it’s usually the Food Network or the Cooking Channel. Go figure.

If I made every recipe I’ve collected it would take several lifetimes. Sometimes I look at a recipe I’ve clipped from a magazine and ask myself, “Why?”

I haven’t answered that question, and I’m not sure that’s a Good Thing or a Bad

Thing. At least

I’m not hearing voices.

I’ve heard of hoarders. I understand there’s even a TV show about them. I may be one, although you can walk through our house fairly unobstructed (if you don’t count a snoozing Labrador or a curled up cat napping in a ray of sunshine). Just don’t open my recipe notebooks. Hundreds of Taste sections, clippings and printouts of recipes will come flying at you.

I’m telling you, I am sick with this.

I feel sorry for whoever has to dispose of my belongings when my time comes. I’m not worried about my underwear drawer or my closet – I swear I’ll have those culled and organized when the time comes.

It’s my recipes I’m concerned about.

I’m going to leave instructions not to dispose of any of them until someone has tried them.

There’s some good stuff in there! At least, I think there is, and it’s going to take someone a really long time to go through all of them.

Mary Henkel Judson is editor and co-publisher of the South Jetty. Contact her at (361) 749-5131, southjetty@centurytel.net or P.O.Box 1117, Port Aransas, TX 78373.