I love to cook and don’t typically use recipes if it’s something I’ve done a lot before. If I’m baking I will check a recipe to make sure I’ve got the weight of ingredients correct. I write in my cookbooks so I don’t repeat the mistakes of my past
I actually have a an old James Beard cookbook that my mom gave to me. It’s kind of cool to see my mom’s notes and my wife’s notes on the same page, 40 years apart. I also love that my mom, my wife and my daughter have all made this recipe
@capnjb I’m seriously thinking of using that recipe today, the version with the 5 C. of bananas and 1/4 sugar - I have frozen bananas I need to use and it’s a cold day!
(I like to add butterscotch chips to my banana bread.)
@capnjb@Kyeh
That’s so cool. We have an old Joy of Cooking that has pages stuck together or stained for those recipes that got done a lot.
And BTW… I made banana bread TODAY for a group of ladies my wife invited to lunch. Served it with ribs I had smoked yesterday, a package of Annie’s Mac n’ Cheese that got seriously augmented/ameliorated/adulterated with extra cheese (chipped asiago/parmesan/romano blend) and bits of sun-dried tomatoes (from last year’s garden). Also had some sourdough (baked yesterday) with a cheese plate and a wonderful salad that SWMBO contributed as well as the spice drop cookies mentioned above elsewhere.
TL:DR We love our old cookbooks.
I like to add butterscotch chips to my banana bread.
SWMBO made some cookies today from a recipe my sister sent with Mom when she came back from her house after Christmas.
One box spice cake mix (WM clearance $.41 recently!)
one can pumpkin
1/2 bag butterscotch morsels
Mix together the 3 ingredients,
bake @ 350 for 20 min. in mini-muffin tins or drop by Tbs on parchment paper. OMG good stuff.
@capnjb
yeah, we seem to have a lot of overlap in our interests/thoughts. I would love to get together and share a beer or three if you are ever in this (central AL) neck of the woods with (or without) the family. Maybe a softball tourney or something…
(I like to add butterscotch chips to my banana bread.)
My wife makes banana muffins with a handful of (frozen) cranberries tossed into the batter. Gives an occasional tart contrast to the otherwise sweet cake. We like it.
All of the above?
I have some cookbooks, but I also just Google something and either end up at a professional website or user-submitted site, or some crappy blog. Sooo I don’t know
I just google my ingredients or ideas and see what web sites pop up. If the author of the web site looks like they eat really well and I don’t see any trigger words like “vegan” or “low fat”, I continue reading.
My mom’s recipe card box or her authentic 1974 edition Betty Crocker cookbook(her original one was getting pretty rough so my dad found her a brand new 1974 edition for her birthday and she was elated…how sweet). Oh and sometimes the good ol Internet.
@2many2no@Kyeh@yakkoTDI My little sister made literal stone soup when we were kids, rocks & water in a plastic beach pail. It was cute until she put it on the stove to cook it. My poor mother, she was more than a bit of a handful. On the plus side (for me, anyway), it made my “rubber ball rolled under the broiler” as a baby seem quaint! Good times.
@2many2no@yakkoTDI@Kyeh Yes, she was the very same future foodie! ALMOST made up for her shenanigans by taking over most of the holiday hosting duties as an adult, saving our mother from them.
Some online, but when I was younger, I would ask my Mom and Grandmother how they made things and I wrote a lot of them down. All these years later, I still use them. I only wish I had more of them.
Just reading the recipe section in an old newspaper and saw this, which perfectly expresses the worst thing about looking up recipes online.
The writer, Kyra Gottesman, says:
“… I discovered that food bloggers are for the most part frustrated autobiographers.” Too true! Thank goodness for the “Jump to Recipe” feature!
@chienfou Old as in I let them pile up unread; this was from last year. Both those papers are but a thin shadow of their former selves, but they do exist.
AND a bunch of ads, which of course are the main reason they want to keep you reading so long about their adorable kiddos and endearingly exaspering “DH.”
We have old cookbooks (from vintage Joy of Cooking (May 1975 edition) to back-to-the-land ones like Laurel’s Kitchen, Deaf Smith Country Cookbook, or Carla Emory’s Old Fashioned Recipe Book) stuff from SWMBO variances like Atkins or WW, some that are in French, a couple of bar-tending/liqueur making books, plus a couple of file folders stuffed with recipes that we use frequently (like my canning and jam recipes). Wife just recently cleaned out the recipe box we had in the kitchen so we are re-visiting some of those recipes. Often will use the 'net to get ones we can’t otherwise source or to try new ingredients/styles.
This is just one of the bookshelves dedicated to cookbooks etc.
Yes, we love to cook eat!
@chienfou@macromeh It could be worse. I used to have a couple of shelves stuffed with cookbooks, including several I see in the pictures. (Laurel’s Kitchen and Joy of Cooking were favorites.) The problem was that I never had much time to cook. Then I retired from the military, finally had time to cook, and got diagnosed with celiac disease. Now all of my fave recipes were useless, and everything I had learned about making bread (which was finally turning out right) would no longer work with gluten-free flours. Goodwill has gotten the cookbooks, and if I need a GF recipe, I look it up on the 'net.
@rockblossom A friend with celiac discovered that in his case, he could eat bread made from kamut flour with no problems because that wheat ancestor has a simpler gluten load that didn’t trigger his allergic response. I have no idea if this would be of any value to you, or even if this is something you would want to investigate. But I thought I’d mention it.
@werehatrack That works in many cases for people with gluten intolerance and a few (very few) with celiac. But - just because a grain doesn’t trigger an immediate response is no guarantee that it is not a “silent killer” creating an immune response in the digestive tract. I had various symptoms of celiac but no overt digestive problems at all. I only got a diagnosis after developing a severe dermatitis herpetiformis rash. By then there was already a lot of damage to cilia, some of which is permanent. I can tolerate some level of oats, but nothing related to wheat, rye, or barley at all. After a couple of times I got “glutened” by accident, I developed a DH rash but had no digestive symptoms.
I don’t cook often because my husband enjoys it more than I do. But when I do, I bake. I look up a few versions of whatever I want to cook, see what they have in common and the differences and then build a recipe based on that. I write it on a note card and if it’s good then it goes into the filed part of the recipe box, if it’s bad I write notes and put it in the front so I can try again another time.
I get recipes from everywhere. Family, friends, websites, Pinterest, make up as I go. It’s more about what I like. I keep the ones I like. I would like to make my own recipes book of my recipes that I use all the time. I did it once for a wedding gift, kinda like scrapbook style but all the recipes I collected were behind plastic so they could never get ruined. They loved the gift bc they didn’t know how to cook really.
@Star2236 What a great wedding gift! You could even get them printed into one of those custom photo books, like the ones that Shutterfly advertises all the time.
@Kyeh
I think I might do it for myself. Uncommon goods has one like that I was looking into. It’s just, do you have to manually type everything in bc that will take FOREVER for each recipe.
A couple of treasures my mother recently let me have - her overstuffed recipe box, and notebook from very early in her wife/mother role; recipes written both in Japanese and English depending on what they are. What cracks me up is the 13 pages of mixed drinks, which I’m pretty sure she never actually made. But thought they’d be essential to entertaining in the U.S. obviously.
A mix of family recipes passed down that are in my head and/or in the family cookbook (my moms cousin published a book w several of the family recipes)
If that doesn’t cut it, then it depends. I have certain friends I check with depending on the type of food or specific chefs I query. Like Rick Bayless, Michael Symon, Julia Child (of course), Italianinmykitchen.com, Lydia Bastianich, etc.
My wife and I have a personal recipe book (mostly from online recipes), but most of the cooking we do from recipes these days is Hello Fresh (which I would only recommend with a bunch of caveats).
I love to cook and don’t typically use recipes if it’s something I’ve done a lot before. If I’m baking I will check a recipe to make sure I’ve got the weight of ingredients correct. I write in my cookbooks so I don’t repeat the mistakes of my past
I actually have a an old James Beard cookbook that my mom gave to me. It’s kind of cool to see my mom’s notes and my wife’s notes on the same page, 40 years apart. I also love that my mom, my wife and my daughter have all made this recipe
@capnjb I also like the memo notes about the financial aid workshop and snowstorm and garage sale.
@Kyeh My favorite is just… ‘Good!’
@capnjb I’m seriously thinking of using that recipe today, the version with the 5 C. of bananas and 1/4 sugar - I have frozen bananas I need to use and it’s a cold day!
(I like to add butterscotch chips to my banana bread.)
@Kyeh Heh… you’re on your own
I will just say that my mom always had a bottle of sherry in a cabinet. So… results are not guaranteed! 
Edit - that just seems like a lot of bananas
@capnjb “Cooking” sherry, of course…
@capnjb @Kyeh
That’s so cool. We have an old Joy of Cooking that has pages stuck together or stained for those recipes that got done a lot.
And BTW… I made banana bread TODAY for a group of ladies my wife invited to lunch. Served it with ribs I had smoked yesterday, a package of Annie’s Mac n’ Cheese that got seriously augmented/ameliorated/adulterated with extra cheese (chipped asiago/parmesan/romano blend) and bits of sun-dried tomatoes (from last year’s garden). Also had some sourdough (baked yesterday) with a cheese plate and a wonderful salad that SWMBO contributed as well as the spice drop cookies mentioned
aboveelsewhere.TL:DR We love our old cookbooks.
@capnjb @Kyeh
SWMBO made some cookies today from a recipe my sister sent with Mom when she came back from her house after Christmas.
One box spice cake mix (WM clearance $.41 recently!)
one can pumpkin
1/2 bag butterscotch morsels
Mix together the 3 ingredients,
bake @ 350 for 20 min. in mini-muffin tins or drop by Tbs on parchment paper. OMG good stuff.
@chienfou I’m pretty sure you are my spirit animal.
@capnjb
yeah, we seem to have a lot of overlap in our interests/thoughts. I would love to get together and share a beer or three if you are ever in this (central AL) neck of the woods with (or without) the family. Maybe a softball tourney or something…
@chienfou I hope that opportunity presents itself
@capnjb @Kyeh
My wife makes banana muffins with a handful of (frozen) cranberries tossed into the batter. Gives an occasional tart contrast to the otherwise sweet cake. We like it.
@capnjb @chienfou Yummmmm… Annie’s does need augmentation and that sounds scrumptious. All the rest of it too!
I’m going to try those cookies, also.
@capnjb @macromeh Frozen cranberries - what a good idea; I’ll try that some time.
All of the above?
I have some cookbooks, but I also just Google something and either end up at a professional website or user-submitted site, or some crappy blog. Sooo I don’t know
What do you mean? It’s printed right on the package.
I just google my ingredients or ideas and see what web sites pop up. If the author of the web site looks like they eat really well and I don’t see any trigger words like “vegan” or “low fat”, I continue reading.
@awk
This is why I like Ina Garten and dislike Giada De Laurentiis.
@awk @Kyeh Amen! That Jeffrey Garten is one lucky dude.
My mom’s recipe card box or her authentic 1974 edition Betty Crocker cookbook(her original one was getting pretty rough so my dad found her a brand new 1974 edition for her birthday and she was elated…how sweet). Oh and sometimes the good ol Internet.
No place. I just make shit up as I go along.
@yakkoTDI What have I got here…
Oh, hell yeah, let’s throw some in.
@2many2no @yakkoTDI
aka Stone Soup. I do that a lot too.
@2many2no @Kyeh @yakkoTDI My little sister made literal stone soup when we were kids, rocks & water in a plastic beach pail. It was cute until she put it on the stove to cook it. My poor mother, she was more than a bit of a handful. On the plus side (for me, anyway), it made my “rubber ball rolled under the broiler” as a baby seem quaint! Good times.
@2many2no @ircon96 @yakkoTDI
Oh no! Made for a hilarious story - but yes, your poor mother! Is this the sister who became a great cook?
@2many2no @ircon96 @Kyeh @yakkoTDI
I just hope it was a metal pail!
@2many2no @ircon96 @yakkoTDI @chienfou Nope:
@Kyeh
~ facepalm ~
@2many2no @yakkoTDI @Kyeh Yes, she was the very same future foodie! ALMOST made up for her shenanigans by taking over most of the holiday hosting duties as an adult, saving our mother from them.
I start with some recipe, then make changes to suit me. No one ever left one of my dinners complaining.
tasteofhome.com or concoctify it
Some online, but when I was younger, I would ask my Mom and Grandmother how they made things and I wrote a lot of them down. All these years later, I still use them. I only wish I had more of them.
I tend to cook freeform. “Season to taste” can be a recipe all by itself.
Just reading the recipe section in an old newspaper and saw this, which perfectly expresses the worst thing about looking up recipes online.
Too true! Thank goodness for the “Jump to Recipe” feature!
The writer, Kyra Gottesman, says:
“… I discovered that food bloggers are for the most part frustrated autobiographers.”
@Kyeh
I would argue that any newspaper that even mentions bloggers is not really “old”.
BTW, Denver Post or Boulder Camera (are either even still around?)
@Kyeh
Amen! That is so super annoying when you have to wade thru a metric shit-ton of unnecessary fluff/BS to get to the point of the article/post.
@chienfou Old as in I let them pile up unread; this was from last year. Both those papers are but a thin shadow of their former selves, but they do exist.
@chienfou
AND a bunch of ads, which of course are the main reason they want to keep you reading so long about their adorable kiddos and endearingly exaspering “DH.”
Edit: exasperating.
We have old cookbooks (from vintage Joy of Cooking (May 1975 edition) to back-to-the-land ones like Laurel’s Kitchen, Deaf Smith Country Cookbook, or Carla Emory’s Old Fashioned Recipe Book) stuff from SWMBO variances like Atkins or WW, some that are in French, a couple of bar-tending/liqueur making books, plus a couple of file folders stuffed with recipes that we use frequently (like my canning and jam recipes). Wife just recently cleaned out the recipe box we had in the kitchen so we are re-visiting some of those recipes. Often will use the 'net to get ones we can’t otherwise source or to try new ingredients/styles.
This is just one of the bookshelves dedicated to cookbooks etc.
Yes, we love to
cookeat!@chienfou My wife may have a problem when it comes to cookbooks…
@chienfou @macromeh It could be worse. I used to have a couple of shelves stuffed with cookbooks, including several I see in the pictures. (Laurel’s Kitchen and Joy of Cooking were favorites.) The problem was that I never had much time to cook. Then I retired from the military, finally had time to cook, and got diagnosed with celiac disease. Now all of my fave recipes were useless, and everything I had learned about making bread (which was finally turning out right) would no longer work with gluten-free flours. Goodwill has gotten the cookbooks, and if I need a GF recipe, I look it up on the 'net.
@rockblossom A friend with celiac discovered that in his case, he could eat bread made from kamut flour with no problems because that wheat ancestor has a simpler gluten load that didn’t trigger his allergic response. I have no idea if this would be of any value to you, or even if this is something you would want to investigate. But I thought I’d mention it.
@werehatrack That works in many cases for people with gluten intolerance and a few (very few) with celiac. But - just because a grain doesn’t trigger an immediate response is no guarantee that it is not a “silent killer” creating an immune response in the digestive tract. I had various symptoms of celiac but no overt digestive problems at all. I only got a diagnosis after developing a severe dermatitis herpetiformis rash. By then there was already a lot of damage to cilia, some of which is permanent. I can tolerate some level of oats, but nothing related to wheat, rye, or barley at all. After a couple of times I got “glutened” by accident, I developed a DH rash but had no digestive symptoms.
Read the instructions on the back of the box.
I don’t cook often because my husband enjoys it more than I do. But when I do, I bake. I look up a few versions of whatever I want to cook, see what they have in common and the differences and then build a recipe based on that. I write it on a note card and if it’s good then it goes into the filed part of the recipe box, if it’s bad I write notes and put it in the front so I can try again another time.
I get recipes from everywhere. Family, friends, websites, Pinterest, make up as I go. It’s more about what I like. I keep the ones I like. I would like to make my own recipes book of my recipes that I use all the time. I did it once for a wedding gift, kinda like scrapbook style but all the recipes I collected were behind plastic so they could never get ruined. They loved the gift bc they didn’t know how to cook really.
@Star2236 What a great wedding gift! You could even get them printed into one of those custom photo books, like the ones that Shutterfly advertises all the time.
@Kyeh
I think I might do it for myself. Uncommon goods has one like that I was looking into. It’s just, do you have to manually type everything in bc that will take FOREVER for each recipe.
@Star2236 For the photo books I think you’d just need to photograph the recipes. You could add photos of the results, too.
@Kyeh
Thank you
A couple of treasures my mother recently let me have - her overstuffed recipe box, and notebook from very early in her wife/mother role; recipes written both in Japanese and English depending on what they are. What cracks me up is the 13 pages of mixed drinks, which I’m pretty sure she never actually made. But thought they’d be essential to entertaining in the U.S. obviously.
@Kyeh your mother has beautiful handwriting! Can you read the recipes in Japanese?
@tinamarie1974
Thanks, I’ll tell her that!
No, sadly I can’t read them at all.
@Kyeh have you thought about having her translate so you can use them?
@tinamarie1974 I really should!
Mostly from memory/my mom, or whatever I can make out of the stuff in my fridge, but I go to Smitten Kitchen for inspiration a lot.
A mix of family recipes passed down that are in my head and/or in the family cookbook (my moms cousin published a book w several of the family recipes)
If that doesn’t cut it, then it depends. I have certain friends I check with depending on the type of food or specific chefs I query. Like Rick Bayless, Michael Symon, Julia Child (of course), Italianinmykitchen.com, Lydia Bastianich, etc.
Beyind that I just get creative!!
My wife and I have a personal recipe book (mostly from online recipes), but most of the cooking we do from recipes these days is Hello Fresh (which I would only recommend with a bunch of caveats).