When I don't know what to cook

Disclaimer: I had no intention of turning my blog in to a food blog this week, but it seems I've been in the mood to cook. The following chatter and photos might make you hungry. Again.

On nights when I have no idea what I want to cook, I go to my recipe keeper. I love my recipe keeper. It's not really my style, but I love what's inside. My mother-in-law gave it to me as a shower gift and filled it with some of her stand-by meals. As the wedding drew nearer, women began to shower me with recipe after recipe.Then I began to request recipes from my mother and grandmothers. I searched through literally hundreds of old family recipes and cookbooks. I gathered all the ones I wanted and wrote them out by hand.

It is nice to have the secrets of a long line of fabulous cooks at my fingertips. Of course, there are some dishes I love so much, that I have not yet attempted to make them myself. I suppose that's not logical, but I just don't want to ruin them. Ham loaf (my great grandmother's recipe) would be one of those dishes. My grandmother's stuffing is another.
As much as I love the wealth of information and variety of meals in my recipe keeper, some nights there's nothing in there I want. Typically when this happens, I turn to All Recipes, or see what other people are cooking. Unfortunately, the amount of information in those places can be overwhelming and I don't feel like looking at all of it.

When this occurs, I make up something very (un)creative like this: Fiesta Chicken Nachos. Chicken marinated and cooked in the salsa of your choice, chopped up and placed on top of tortilla chips with melted cheese. It was crazy easy and crazy good. Next time I'll try to make it fancier, but it was pretty darn good the first time around.
p.s. If someone would like to make me this binder for recipe keeping, or teach me how to make such a thing, I would be much obliged.