Clipping recipes - the great magazine cull

I started collecting food magazines about fifteen years ago. I was obsessed with food, cooking and the ins and outs of the Australian food scene.

Fast forward to late last year, the top shelf of Olive's wardrobe was groaning with back issues of Delicious, Donna Hay, Good Taste, Vogue Entertaining, Gourmet Traveller & Cuisine.

They were organised by title and season so I could pull out a set of Autumnal issues in March and seek inspiration. But truth be told, less and less of the recipes grabbed my interest. I'm not interested in cheffy tricks and complicated processes anymore. Nowadays I'm looking for quick, simple recipes that get me through the week and stand up to being reheated when Mr Di-licious comes home late from work.

Faced with the prospect of moving boxes and boxes of magazines that I hardly looked at anymore, I decided to get rid of them...but not before one last flick through in order to clip any recipes that still caught my eye.

I made a big dent in the pile but I still ended up moving boxes of them to our new place..three months ago. This afternoon I pulled an armful down off the shelf and started clipping again.

I've found a stack of recipes using plums that'll come in handy next December - roasted plums & spiced plum chutney. An awesome sounding lavender jelly recipe and more cake recipes. The nicest surprise was finding notes scrawled in the margins of meals we loved 10 years ago. Unsurprisingly, they're the type of recipes I want to cook now.

Of course clipping recipes is all well and good. Instead of shelves of magazines I now have multiple boxes of recipes waiting to be filed. A project for another day......

Comments

My blog is making me fat

Temptation lurks everywhere. It’s official. My blog is making me fat. It’s also keeping my house messy since I started prioritising writing and baking over vacuuming and putting away laundry. In fact it’s happening right now – I’ve slept in because I stayed up to watch the new Kennedy’s drama on ABC and then wanted to ‘quickly’ check in to see if there were any new messages or comments. Before I know it its really late and that coffee I had after lunch has kicked in, giving me caffeine-induced heart palpitations, delaying sleep even further. Mr Di-licious (bless him) allowed me to sleep in and delivered a latte to my bedside. There’s a bowl of porridge waiting for me on the kitchen bench, ready to be reheated while I turn on my laptop and think about my next post. I used to get up early and go to the gym before breakfast but lately I’ve just been too tired. You know you’ve been MIA when you get notified about a trainer leaving and you’ve absolutely no idea who they’re talk

Cute owl cupcake toppers

Hoot Hoot!! How cute are these adorable owl cupcake toppers? I whipped these up last week for a special surprise birthday delivery for my niece. I've been making cupcakes for Hannah's birthdays for the last three years. Its always interesting to look back at photos of earlier decorating efforts - I've come a long way. Last year was sort of the p ièce de résistance - the famed Golden Snitch cupcakes for her Harry Potter themed party. This year we were getting ready for our epic drive to Byron Bay for my sister's wedding , so we didn't make it to Bendigo. So no Di-licious cupcakes for Hannah. At least, that's what she thought! Last week I arranged to come and stay the night with Olive and I brought along half a dozen cute owl cupcakes - SURPRISE! We both agree that the embossed ones make the greatest impact but the plain pink ones are cute too. I re-purposed a scrapbooking card embosser to create the embossing effect (cheaper than the cak

Recipe rant

This is not a macaron Donna I did something yesterday that I'm not very proud of. I ranted on Twitter and Facebook about a bad recipe experience and named and shamed the culprit. This morning I felt a little ashamed for my lack of manners. But then I got some feedback from friends and fans that they too had had a bad experience with the recipe and agreed it wasn't up to scratch. If the situation were reversed, I'd be mortified. But then again, I'm a little voice in the blogging net-osphere. The magazine/author I targeted is a household name with 10+ years standing. I guess what really gets my goat is that the magazine blatantly promotes the fact that they test and retest the recipes to make sure that they're perfect. I followed the recipe to the letter and even I could see that the wheels were coming off early in the piece. But I was following their recipe and I persevered. In the end I ended up with flat, grainy meringues, not beautiful macarons.

Di-licious

Search This Blog