Since the beginning of our relationship, my boyfriend and I have always cooked together. On many Saturdays, we’ll head to Granville Island to buy fresh ingredients and spend the evening enjoying our culinary experiments. I would say that almost every dish we’ve tried has been successful. I think this says less about our skills in the kitchen and more about our ability to follow recipe directions.
Regardless, cooking together has been a great way to practice our teamwork and communication skills. To be honest, I’m surprised we’ve managed to do so well since I’m admittedly a Type A chef. I’ve had to refrain from taking the knife out of his hands when he didn’t chop fast enough. And I’m sure he’s refrained from stabbing me with said knife. Seriously, how we’ve avoided a meltdown in the kitchen is beyond me.
We cook new dishes as often as possible which means poring over cookbooks and scouring the internet. The result is lots of bookmarked pages, in print and digitally with ingredients jotted down on random bits of paper to take to the market. We really needed a way to consolidate it all and keep track of any notes and changes to each recipe. What a perfect excuse to buy a new journal.
There are lots of recipe journals out there but we wanted something plain so we could write what we needed without the confines of boxes, lists and check boxes. We ended up getting a simple ruled notebook with a food theme cover. Seltzer Goods had a couple and we chose the Rice and Beans cover (left) since neither of us are herbivores:
Here’s a cute one from MAUstudio on Etsy:
If you are looking for something with more organization, this one from Moleskine is great. Fully embossed cover, inner pocket, food calendars, measurements and conversions and multiple sections for courses and personal entries. It has everything a recipe journal ought to. While we were wowed by all its features, it’s more than what we needed so we opted out.
We’ve been copying in our favourite recipes so far and it’s nice to have everything in one place without having to go online or pull out the heavy cookbooks. Now if only making risotto was as easy as copying the recipe down…
~ Cassie
{ images from Seltzer Goods, MAUstudio, Moleskine }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post!
My recipes are an absolute mess – lots of tear outs from random magazines along with the online things you’re talking about. Then there’s the complete experiments that are all hand written – with crossed out revisions and later notes to improve it.
The biggest problem? My ILLEGIBLE handwriting! hahaha.
Thanks Mari! Your recipe collection sounded like mine
The only tough thing was finding time to copy them all in but I suggest just gluing or taping your current tear outs and calling it a day.