Recipes

[SnuggleBunny]

On 3/2/2014 annabellethecat said:

Snugglebunny, no truer words were spoken. I used to collect cookbooks. Sometimes I'd make something from one of the books.

Often, it was hit or miss! My family gradually got upset with me and took a vote and voted no more experimenting with some of these cookbooks. (In other words, some of them were terrible). I would promise that I'd followed the directions, ingredients and all. They would say, "No way someone would be allowed to put out a cookbook on something that terrible".

Well, they did and they were allowed and people (ummmmm me) bought it/them.

Live and learn.

Now that I live here with my two new furbabies, I don't cook (well just spaghetti).

They are grateful that I don't buy cat cookbooks.

Hi annabellethecat - I usually just google a recipe I need and then look for the 5 star favorites. I used to collect cookbooks too! I'd usually find maybe only one recipe that I'd make so I quit buying them. The meatloaf recipe wasn't in a book - it was on the QVC forum - just don't want to name the author. LOL - I've been thinking about you - hope your heart is on the mend. . . . . .

[Nonametoday]

In some cases, it's "beauty's in the eye of the beholder." What may taste yummy to one, may not to another. However, I have made many dishes from my recipe file and taken it to work on my off day for those workers to enjoy. I would have such positive results that I learned to type the recipe with enough copies that each staff person had a copy. More times than not, I had them state that I must have omitted something or added something because their recipe did not taste like the one I brought to work. Sometimes, it's in the hands of the one who is preparing it to make it taste "right." No results are ever guaranteed.

[daisyk]

On 3/3/2014 StylishLady said:

When I bought the more current/up to date Better Homes & Gardens cookbook I found they had changed some of my tried and true recipes. Guess newer isn't always better.

Wow, BH&G has always been my favorite go to for basics. Have they tried to make the recipes healthier or something?

[daisyk]

On 3/3/2014 stilltamn8r said:

I have to laugh.. My son says "Giada" is "Italian for 'recipes that don't turn out'"!!

Funny! I tried some Rachael Ray pasta thing once and it was terribly "soupy". Yuck. I've had good luck with some of Martha's Everyday Foods recipes, but she had other cooks doing those shows, they weren't her recipes per se. Bobby Flays spaghetti and meatballs were nothing to write home about. Ina Garten's gravy which has raves on the internet was only so so to me. I usually use corn starch as a thickener as opposed to flour and Ina's recipe called for flour, so that was probably a personal taste thing. I could taste the flour in the gravy even though I cooked the roux as noted. I've actually had good luck with Pioneer Woman. Her recipes might not be much, but the food I've tried turns out tasting good anyway. I have a book by the French chef Pierre Franey Cuisine Rapide. He's passed away now, but his recipes are awesome. I made a fairly easy chicken dish that tasted like a restaurant dish. He had a show on tv years ago.

[ChynnaBlue]

Just because anyone writes ANY book doesn't mean it's any good.

[Mistreatedbycs]

On 3/2/2014 Nancy Drew said:

Yep! Some of Martha Stewarts are kind of bad.

I agree but her bran muffin recipe is delicious. Doesn't make many muffins but I like I can make a small amount and not a huge 12 muffin batch.

[stilltamn8r]

Yeah, you know you're in trouble with a cookbook when the directions call for adding the eggs "one at a time" and you look back at the recipe and it didn't call for any eggs!!!

[Mistreatedbycs]

My mom's cookbooks have handwritten notes for all the recipes she has made throughout the years and I mark my books up too.

We mark them "excellent, very good, don't make again".

Sometimes there are quite a lot of errors in printing recipes and our local newspaper is known for that, usually the next week they print a correction. Not so lucky for cookbooks, some may never get corrected.

[Yahooey]

I don't own many cookbooks but I do own America's Test Kitchen and they come out great. I don't know about Martha's cooking but I do like some of her baking recipes and I own the Cookie cookbook. Nowadays, I just get the recipe off a site and not bother with a whole book.

[ChynnaBlue]

On 3/3/2014 nantucket shore said:

My mom's cookbooks have handwritten notes for all the recipes she has made throughout the years and I mark my books up too.

We mark them "excellent, very good, don't make again".

Sometimes there are quite a lot of errors in printing recipes and our local newspaper is known for that, usually the next week they print a correction. Not so lucky for cookbooks, some may never get corrected.

So true! My mom's recipes are all annotated and I've done the same with my books. (I buy all my novels on my Kindle, but I have to have cook books in print, even if I have a Kindle version.)

My aunt used to edit craft magazines for the company that owned Taste of Home before it was sold to Reader's Digest. The crafts were also submitted by users and she had to interpret and rewrite the instructions so that they made sense to the end user, which often meant recreating parts that didn't make sense and uncovering errors she had to correct. The recipes went through the same process, but every one got recreated in the test kitchen before being published. Even so, errors happen and things might get altered when the final copy went to press or an error got left in and there would be H E double hockey sticks to pay when they got letters from readers who couldn't complete a project or got confused because of an error that made it to print. Retractions got published, but in a magazine, they're easy to miss if you don't buy every issue. Even many printed recipe and craft books have an errata sheet that most people don't get or don't know where to look for.