Foodlover - what are you?

Posted by: J1
Date: March 2, 2012 04:30PM

What is it that makes you a Foodlover?

I enjoy trying new recipes and, apart from having my favourites as standby meals, go months without eating the same thing twice.

A sad thought for me is that my life isn't long enough to try all the recipes out there I'd like to try. These days I'm a ruthless culler of recipes and have refined my "reading a recipe" skill so I have a better idea how they're going to turn out (well, hopefully!). Apart from tomato sauce recipes (!), I currently have only three recipes left in my "try" pile and they're being made in the next few days. It's always great to get to the bottom of it!

My first love is(was ) baking and making desserts but, sadly, the call/need for this has reduced to pretty much zero. I've replaced it with pleasure in making curries and pastas.

I look forward to trying new foods and like looking up what the fancy words on restaurant menus mean.

I avoid buying recipe books and/or magazines as the one or two permanent recipes I get from them makes it a negative experience. The library, newspapers and internet keep me in recipes. Whenever ancient recipe books come my way, I enthusiastically look through them and keep the most compelling.

When I'm out and about, I feel misery upon experiencing an unenjoyable/boring meal as life is too short for such a wasted mealtime!



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 02/03/12 04:31PM by J1.

Re: Foodlover - what are you?
Posted by: Cheese Lover
Date: March 2, 2012 06:22PM

I mostly like cooking but there are plenty of nights when it is a chore. I certainly love eating and trying new foods and recipes.

I am a competent home cook and love entertaining, and tend to entertain more in the Jamie Oliver style rather than the Nigella style. I have been known to forget to serve dishes due to too much gasbagging over a glass of wine. Casual and imperfect but hopefully tasty and delicious.

I also enjoy baking for family and friends. I love eating home baking too...luckily I do love exercising and have a keen sporty family. However as my boys get older, more active and hungrier balancing their needs for energy rich food versus my own lesser need is a challenge at times.

I am not a total purist - we mostly eat seasonally and home made, but my kids love bought biscuits and canned spaghetti....

I like exchanging ideas on Foodlovers and would like to comment that the community is particularly friendly...especially at the moment when we seem to have only supportive and positive posters.

I do buy some recipe books and magazines, and am possibly due for an update here. However two that I still pull out after MANY years are Alison Holst Kitchen Diary and the Edmonds Cook Book..As J1 said, your cooking style evolves as your needs change. When we were DINK the entertaining was all adult oriented, now mostly we entertain with families so the food is more casual, less spicy, and simpler.

I was also lucky enough to win the Hunter Valley/Sydney trip through a competition on this website and am heading off later in March. I will report back



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 02/03/12 06:29PM by Cheese Lover.

Re: Foodlover - what are you?
Posted by: rayqsl
Date: March 2, 2012 09:12PM

I'm a curry lover from way back. I've always liked curries but for years I never made any because I'm a very average cook. In fact, I'm not really a cook. But over the last few years I've been making curries from recipes on the [www.curryfocus.co.uk] website (which I run with a friend of mine). There are lots of curries on the website and it is fun testing out a recipe each week and then writing a blog about it.

I've tried lots of different curries that I wouldn't dream of buying in a restaurant, either because I wouldn't take the risk of buying something that I might not like or because I don't know what the dish really is. I prefer simple recipes that even a novice can follow. I get lots of recipes given by friends (I force them to give me their recipes) and then put them on the website. Most of the curries range from good to great and there is sometimes a failure (but not always my fault - sometimes a recipe does not work).

I have about 20 curry recipe books but get most of my new recipes from friends or submitted by people via the website. If you've got a favourite recipe then you can email it to me at curryfocus@gmail.com and I'll get it published on the website.

Most of the visitors to the website come from the UK but a decent number come from NZ. Curries are international.

You can't beat a yummy curry.


*********************************************

Curry Focus [www.curryfocus.co.nz]
Great curry recipes and recipe reviews
curryfocus@gmail.com

Re: Foodlover - what are you?
Posted by: TPANDAV
Date: March 2, 2012 11:16PM

I'm with you, J1. I love to eat and therefore I love to cook. I agree that a bad meal is a tragic waste of opportunity.

I have a big collection of recipe books, and although I don't buy nearly as many as I used to there are still some food writers that I can't resist. Greg & Lucy Malouf's books are in this category. I enjoy following complex recipes, especially for Indian and SE Asian curries.

I am fairly purist about food and make most things from scratch, including curry pastes and fresh cheeses. We have a big vege garden which often dictates to the kitchen. We travel regularly; we always stay in apartments wherever we are, and I love to shop at foreign food markets and cook with local produce.

I used to love to bake, pastry and sourdough bread in particular, but our household has been grain-free for a while now and I very rarely bake apart from an occasional nut-based cake for pudding if we have guests.

I don't have much interest in magazine and newspaper recipes, nor in amateur blogs.

My present favourite food culture is the Middle East, Lebanese and Turkish cuisine in particular.

Re: Foodlover - what are you?
Posted by: fionah
Date: March 2, 2012 11:40PM

Great thread. I love to read about food, and always bring new books from the library. Funnily enough I rarely cook from these. I am a competent home cook but like others find it a chore too, and hate to think about what to cook every night when in a hurry with work, kids and meetings etc. I have a son who is a keen cook and very helpful in the kitchen. We all love curries, baking, home made pasta and chicken in all its guises. My favourite inspiring chefs are Annabel Langbein, Ray McVinnie, Alison Holst, some of Delia Smith's work and the recipes here on foodlovers - ordinary people trying to cook interesting affordable food

Re: Foodlover - what are you?
Posted by: cantabcook
Date: March 3, 2012 12:50AM

Another one here who loves to cook (and eat). I've tend to go through phases in my cooking. When I first started looking at FL I was stuck in a cooking rut, doing the same old same old on a rotating basis - at least it felt like that. I found this site an awesome resource for picking foodie brains and discovered lots of tricks, recipes and tidbits of info along the way. Then we started the weekly food challenge and my cooking mojo was off and racing.
I now like trying new recipes more often. Have started growing my own veges and some fruit and from there went on to preserving and bottling. Have delved into making feta cheese and would like to get into more cheesemaking. While I do try to cook from scratch as often as possible, I'm not wonder woman so am happy to buy packets of things if need be (but way less now than I used to). I bake for the kids and hubby and make the odd loaf of bread.

My latest foody change has been to join Weight Watchers and I've been happily trying newer, lighter versions of my old recipes and trying to knock off my years of excess (with a lot of success I must add). So am trying lots of foods I'd never considered before, cooking almost everything from scratch and poring over mags, online sites and books whenever I have a spare moment.

Have a huge collection of cookbooks but am trying hard to wean myself off more than one new one a year. I still succumb to the food mags every now and again and have a couple of favourite websites that I regularly search for new dishes.

Re: Foodlover - what are you?
Posted by: Godmother
Date: March 3, 2012 04:11AM

I'm at peace in the kitchen, and although I work full time, I treat cooking as a hobby - some people run/swim/play golf, I cook. Also, the voluntary work I do involves cooking. Lucky me to have found the kitchen. Lucky family and friends who I look to for feedback.

Re: Foodlover - what are you?
Posted by: cheesecake
Date: March 3, 2012 10:50PM

I've always been a very keen cook, and love to try new recipes - an average of one new one each week. I have collected approx 50 recipe books (I was horrified when I counted them recently when I was doing a survey!). I also buy a number of food related magazines - my favourites are Foodtown, Taste and Donna Hay. Due to food intolerances I'm quite limited in what I can eat, so I have to adapt a lot of recipes.

Even though I can't eat more than a mouthful of the end result, I love to bake (especially cheesecakes hence my nickname for the site).

I like entertaining, but try to find the elusive meals that are easy to cook and taste special. There is nothing worse than recipes that have you in the kitchen half the night (that's why I don't subscribe to Cuisine).

My husband thinks I have too many kitchen gadgets, but I say never enough...

Re: Foodlover - what are you?
Posted by: Lilibeth
Date: March 4, 2012 03:36AM

I enjoy lots of the luscious things in life. I actually think what people cook tells you a lot of where they have been, who they admire (how many people have recipes from a favourite nana?) and how organised they are.

I enjoy cooking an awful lot because it takes a good variety of skills to do it well in the a day-to-day sense. Budgeting, time management, will power, knowledge and ties in nicely with gardening.

[lingerieheaven.co.nz]
Because life is special, not just February 14.

[blog.lingerieheaven.co.nz]

Great way to use up tomatoes (and darn handy)

Eat well, live well, dress well.

Re: Foodlover - what are you?
Posted by: Griz
Date: March 4, 2012 03:44AM

I've always had an interest in cooking/food, and if I'd had a more inspiring/supportive dom sci teacher at intermediate level I might have followed it as a career. I was the baker in our family, as my Mum worked so it was my job to keep the tins full. I've always been adventurous wanting to try different recipes and cuisines and ingredients.
When I had my kids I became very limited as DS has a disability which meant he had no solid food intake at all for his first four years and a carefully managed diet for the next ten or so. He and his sister (now 18 and 16) are foodies these days too though
Like Cantab I'm a WW these days and so have had to learn to limit my excess, I tend to keep my cooking to pretty plain lean/grilled meats and salads most of the time and stick to what I know fills me up. Whenever I'm on annual leave I let the reins out and cook whatever I want, tonight we had Thai red curry (paste from scratch), coconut and safron rice, a green salad with a coconut milk dressing and a mango/pineapple upside down cake with caramel sauce, yummo.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE chilli and curries, the hotter the better, jalapeno's straight from the jar and that kind of thing!
I like to cook from scratch as well.
I buy all the food mags, but tend to hand on Taste, Foodtown and Donna Hay, as I find the recipes a bit "simplistic", I like recipes that stretch my techniques/knowledge a bit. I collect Cuisine, Delicious (my all time fav) and Dish, and my hubby despairs of my tendency to "accquire" recipe books as well.
I like to make things to make people happy, and often cook for my workmates, just because I get joy from the cooking and seeing people enjoy my food and then I don't have to eat it.