I know there’s solace to be found in food (emotional eating, anyone?) but I also find it strangely comforting to simply read recipes, as well. It’s a little bit of an armchair adventure for me, to peruse the ingredients, imagine the taste, contemplate which friend might best enjoy this dish… Really, it leaves me feeling quite contented when I come across some exciting new recipe possibility.
Truly, the social component of recipe reading is a large portion of my enjoyment. I evaluate recipes with my friends in mind: Hmmm... Tiny Woman would like this one, with its large helping of crunchy raw veggies; Q would enjoy this plain meat ’n’ potatoes meal; this one will be handy for my assorted vegetarian friends; and oooh! this one contains cheesecake/jalapenos/raw herring - perfect for SP! (Even BG still tries to barge his way into my mental dinner party planning but I’m getting better at locking the door.)
But it's also true that my recipe reading pleasure also stems in part from the fact that I’m actually a pretty good judge of how a completed recipe will taste, which bolsters my cooking success. I sometimes wonder if this is some form of recipe reading talent or if it’s simply many long years of cooking and eating. (Operation Healthy would seem to indicate the latter but I prefer the fantasy of having mad skillz!)
But regardless of origin, regardless if the recipes are for sweet, sour, savory, baked, boiled, familiar, or exotic… I can generally predict what the outcome will be like.
In fact, the only place this skill seems to fail me is in evaluating recipes for disaster.
There, I completely lose all pretensions to sound judgement.
But that’s another post for another day…
;-p
14 comments:
Most of the vanilla blogs I follow are recipes. I get this ;-)
You never fail to make me guffaw!
Locking doors when imagining dinner parties?
cheesecake/jalapenos/raw herring - interesting...that would qualify as a recipe for disaster in my mind..but what do I know, I was brought up a vegetarian:)
Always look forward to your posts.
R is for Rann of Kutchch
What a fun post Jz. I love to read recipes yet I hardly ever get around to cooking them.
I might venture over to one of your mental dinner parties to view your mad skillz. Make mine gluten/dairy free please? See what delicious things you conjure up. LOL!
Hugs Lindy xx
Love this post, Jz. I collect cookbooks and many times just sit and read them as I would a novel. Get wonderful ideas...many recipes are used as guidelines or suggestions. LOL Family and friends usually bring me cookbooks from their travels. I also have some of my grandfathers cookbooks from back when he was in the Merchant Marines during WWII...those are awesome! Wish we all lived close enough to get together for a big feast. :)
Hugs and blessings...Cat
Most recipes i read with an eye toward whether my Sweetie would eat it or not. As for disaster recipes, there are days when mine simply starts with "wake up in the morning..."
Hi Jz - if there's a recipe I'll always look at it - I don't do so much cooking now - but always use fresh food for my own meals ... but used to love to create dishes for family and friends to share ... and cookery books still draw me in - cheers Hilary
B-
Yepper - my balance is greatly weighted toward cooking blogs.
A-
Guffawing is good! I’m glad. :-)
The door is only locked for the man I just broke up with in December… all others are welcome at any time! (I’m training myself not to think about what he’d think…)
(OK, I won’t serve herring jalapeno cheesecake at the big blogger bash…)
;-p
l-
You would be very welcome to my mental dinner party. (And the big blogger bash that Arti and I are throwing.) I won’t even have to do any extra searching for your gluten/dairy free recipes. I’m already in possession of a number of dishes to cover those requirements. It would actually give me the excuse to try the vegan banoffee pie I’ve had bookmarked for a couple of years now!
C-
Since I’ve ended up as the family archivist, I have all my mom’s cookbooks, my dad’s cookbooks, and even my grandma’s… not to mention my own. You’d think I would have enough fodder there to keep me occupied til Doomsday… but no. I still like to collect my own!
(So, you wanna help cook for the big blogger bash?)
mm-
Yeah… that’s the part I’m having to train myself out of - cooking with an eye toward the beloved.
And hoooooboy, do I hear you on those recipes for disaster! :-D
Some days, it just doesn’t take much, does it?
H-
Well, you don’t need to do much cooking for the big blogger bash, just come and eat! :-)
(And sit and read recipes afterwards.)
Interesting read
M-
Thank you!
(make you run out and grab a cookbook?) ;-D
I hate cooking. AND I'm a picky eater myself...sometimes I'll see a recipe, cut it out, stick it on the freezer, then throw it away a year later when I'm cleaning the old drek of papers...
Yup, totally unimaginative in the kitchen. Take out, anyone?
nilla
I hate cooking. AND I'm a picky eater myself...sometimes I'll see a recipe, cut it out, stick it on the freezer, then throw it away a year later when I'm cleaning the old drek of papers...
Yup, totally unimaginative in the kitchen. Take out, anyone?
nilla
Dear Orange Chicken Woman,
(And yes, that's available in take-out)
You do realize that I've taken it as a challenge, to expand your eating ways?
:-D
Your friend the omnivore
Orange Chicken Woman here...
bwahahahaha...if you can get me to eat veggies, then the world might just explode...
nilla
I can.
I have pictures, remember??
;-p
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