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 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2012 09:31PM by J1.

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 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2012 11:29PM by Cheese Lover.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

I love to cook, I love to eat, I read recipe books for fun.
I have way too many recipe books (according to my husband - I beg to differ) and have just received 2 food magazine subscriptions for Christmas and a recent birthday - yay!

I am becoming more interested in the whole idea of where food comes from and how it is treated, and also in the amount off junk there is out there, and how we can reduce our intake of such. As a result, my children are growing up with at least a basic awareness of a balanced diet - I hope.

We are now growing more of our veges and fruit - our 2 peacherine trees (only 3 or 4 years old) have produced well over 100 peacherines between them this year, and we are stoked that finally our fruit trees are looking promising!
It is great for the kids to be able to walk outside and get snow peas and cheery tomatoes, and fruit for in their school lunches.

All this makes me sound like a bit of a greenie …..

Haven't replied to this yet as I don't know the answer. But it has given me food for thought!

I've become a foodlover later in life. My mum hated cooking and we were three fussy children who she agonised about getting the right nutrition into (she was a child in the UK during the second WW where food was scarce and malnutrition common). I never helped in the kitchen, apart from to make popcorn once. Which I burnt and wrecked the pan.

My grandmother, who I lived with during my teenage years, was an excellent - if traditional - cook. Again, I didn't help much apart from frying potatoes. In my 20s, I wasn't interested in food at all. I ate because I had to.

What changed all this was when my oldest son was a baby (13 years ago) and to get out of the house, I did an evening course in Christchurch called "Gourmet cooking". This gave me the confidence to try such 'exotic' things as cannelloni, and foccasia, and venison stew and realised it wasn't as hard as it looks. And I've never looked back.

I am lucky enough to live on a lifestyle block, and it's my philosophy to grow more than lawn and landscaping, so we have chickens for eggs and every couple of years fatten cattle and pigs to fill the freezer. I also grow quite a lot of vegetables - some better than others - but not as much fruit as I'd like to.

With the meat, you get the whole animal back in bits, and there's a lot of less-prime cuts along with the prime ones. So I've had to get inventive and experimental to find new and interesting ways to cook them. And of course with vegetables (and eggs) you tend to get gluts, so my starting point for a recipe tends to be whatever uses a lot of whatever needs using up.

I have loads of cookbooks. I enjoy reading them all, although many of them are full of recipes I will never try for one reason or another (mostly because I know my beloved won't like them). He supports my love of food though, and buys me a new cookbook for every gift-buying occasion (Christmas, birthdays, mother's day, anniversaries, etc).

The exciting thing is that there is still so much more to discover and learn on my food journey

I just want to say thanks for all the great responses so far, it's been really interesting.

I too never cooked until my mid twenties, and my husband jokes I was the only vegetarian that didn'like veggies. When i met my husband i could cook bean nachos and spinach and cheese canneloni! I have no idea what i survived on? Now i read cookbooks whilst watching tv :-)
Being vegetarian and growing to love all veggies etc, and gradually realising that the food I produce is better than most pre made, and especially in the restaurnt eating out senerio of vegetarians, find that my home made meals are generally a lot better than some so called chefs efforts!
I too sometimes get a bit fed up of the day to day routines, but thankfully I have very well fed guinea pigs who greatfully try out anything I make, and really very rarely complain, which makes it all worth while. Hopefully i have inspired them to when they grow up to give it all a go.
I have just started the wonderful process of making cheese, halloumi I seem to have mastered, and will try my luck next with feta!

Sorry, I'm behind with the whole website...I just returned to Uni last week and within a few days found out I was on the wrong programme. My head-space went completely on the blink with everything including food! New Programme has in "progress" i.e. waiting for electronic system to sift through what boxes I ticked and for why <g>

So who am I?

Home alone, single...

Well many of you know that my rental property had an oven but I didn't know it worked to a different tune until sometime last year when I finally got my BA and was home more - baking. The landlord bought me a new oven!

That mean I had no excuses and I believed I would use the oven more...so I started looking seriously at recipes - both the ones at home and the library books. I did a few things, then decided after acquiring a "one serve" wok, I liked simple things.

Every time I have needed help...it has been rapidly forthcoming. I still haven't done anything about replacing blender (pennies still tight); I've finally found a muffin recipe that works well for my skills (might be slightly wrong but they are edible); I tried bread making (it was so-so and I might do some more); I grew tomatoes, zucchini & chard in a new tiny weeny veg patch (found out what was eating toms/black birds) so now I have dozens of toms in various states kitchen/addon; I've moreorless mastered other things (brain dead after dealing with "dicent-indices in musical semiotics" today)

Some things of course do not work! But some of those things end up being something else or they find their way into a bin. I've more to explore and will do that in the fullness of time...

Catherine

Do not wait; the time will never be 'just right'. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along. ­ Napoleon Hill

Like Stephanie D it took me awhile to think about this. This foodlover is a bit of a fraud. I love the idea of making delicious food, served beautifully on lovely china, eaten in fantastic surroundings. Reality is in a different universe!! I am either throwing together quick food for 3 after getting home late from work or food in bulk for 14 on a budget, over the weekends when everyone comes home. Tastes ok most of the time, rarely beautifully presented on sensible plates in a home that looks lived in not chic. I do like to try new things and my family are happy tasters (12year old grandson being the most discerning critic)aaaa the dream verses reality But I love this site because I suspect I am not alone!

I am a sad loser, well, sort of. I have mountains of cookery books, read the recipes in mags, copy them etc. etc. However, I rarely cook from my books although I use them for baking. I frequently do my own recipes of the 'a bit of this and a bit of that' kind. Having said that, I believe we (just two of us now) have tasty and healthy meals and I do experiment a bit as well. I love tasty food but have at times found that a recipe that looked promising did not measure up. Perhaps I am getting lazy. There are, however, recipes from foodlovers on this site that I use frequently, one of them being Kathy's mediterranean chicken. A very firm favourite. Like others, I often find cooking a bit of a chore when I am tired but I generally do make the effort to produce something yummy. I just don't know how, in the past, I managed my job, cooking every night - including dessert - and making lunches for the three of us the night before. On reflection - I was quite a bit younger...

Chris, that age thing might be part of me as well...along with less to cook/bake for so there isn't any great need.

Over these last two weeks when Uni was looking like, possibly get out of there...I was thinking that I could take some serious cooking classes that would challenge me if I chose to jump off the Uni wagon...

But I'm still there, on a semi-same programme that I was on when I enrolled in PG late last year, but with a change course load. All great papers, just somewhat annoyed at how Uni "works" - no apology for the mess and insanity just told "get to classes!!"

I even got behind with my home baking/muffins so I have none for this week to take :-)

Good luck, Cathy, not long till the weekend now and you might be able to bake something as a bit of light relief. I found being an adult student not easy and gave up after finishing stage II Sociology. I did well in my assignments but I had to slave so much for my results when the students just out of High School churned them out in less than half the time it took me for results that were not that far behind mine. The lure of an immediate income won out in the end. I don't have regrets. All the best with your courses.

It is interesting reading this thread and I can relate to so much of what has been written.
I love reading recipes and getting new ideas, not necessarily making my product exactly the same, but taking parts from them. I do the same with the written recipes I get when I go to a local cookschool.
As a child Mum would let me do some baking, I must have really tried her patience at times, but she always encouraged me. Apart from very basics I can't remember actually preparing dinner, but I often helped prepare the vegetables. When I was around 11-12 we went to 'tech' each fortnight where we spent the morning cooking and the afternoon sewing. I hated a lot of that, later I realised it was more to do with the formal type of teaching and how it was applied. With one teacher it was fun and interesting, the other, definitely not so.
When I married I was working full days and like most women back then, also doing most of the cooking and food preparation, such as jams, pickles and preserves. I don't think I bought ready made jam or biscuits for many years. Hallelujah!! Thank goodness now we have some really good products on our supermarket shelves.
Times change and when the children grew and flew it was more of a gradual change, as they went to boarding schools, so were home in the holidays and some weekends. Both learned to cook at home and are competent cooks.
Recently, my food/eating patterns have changed because of a health issue, which is still 'work in progress' (hospital staff do a great job, but right now I am tired of them). I still have my favourite foodie magazines, not just for the recipes, but they often have great articles.
I am so glad that I discovered Helen's foodlovers site, with the blogs, recipes, helpful hints and comments, it feels like 'family and friends'.

Like many here I was a bit of a late bloomer too - with respect to food.
I was rarely allowed in the kitchen as a child - my mother is a bit of a perfectionist and didn't like little children messing up what she was doing.
She was a plain, traditional cook - but good at doing what she did, there was always cake in the cake tins, homemade jam and pickles in the cupboard.
Meals at night were always a meat and three vege affair. I HATED this with a passion. I felt no enthusiasm for food at all growing up - except for the pickled onions and the caramel square!
It was only once I moved away from home did I begin to be a little more adventurous ( but not much!)I did not eat an olive until I was over 20 - I'd never had anchovies - or eaten squid, never had hollandaise sauce until my mid 20's - never ate real pasta until I was in my mid 20's. Never had a curry until I was in my 30's, never ate a pistachio or even tried a chili of any kind. Chinese takeaways were about the most exotic thing I had ever eaten.
A whole new world of flavours opened up to me via the restaurants in Wellington. I didn't yet think I could cook anything other than meat and 3 vege myself.
It was actually my brother in law who was a keen cook that got me thinking about making more adventurous foods. So it was only in my late 20's early 30's that I started to cook and bake from recipe books and expand my food horizons.
I was never really a picky eater.. I just had not had the opportunity to try anything other than a very bland diet.
I have a lot of cookbooks but I also just love browsing about online to find new and exciting things to cook or ways to make things from scratch that I would normally buy.

Once I discovered I was a good cook and baker - nothing stops me. I cook anything and everything and eat anything and everything. My kids are the same. As adults they have very adventurous palates. My oldest child was in vietnam eating cobra last week! (tastes like fish - texture like steak apparently - or was it the other way around?)
My table always has people around it that are excited about the food that will be put on it. It might be a salad for just my husband and me, a vegan meal for 8 - a traditional Kiwi roast for 10 or a mexican meal for friends + kids.
I like to think that I can cook anything and will give anything a go. I've had recipes published, won a number of cooking/recipe competitions for various things, given cooking demonstrations and at Easter of one of my recipes will be in the dominion post. My foodblog is bustling with people emailing me often to ask questions about this and that. I think I've come a long way since age 30 and never having eaten an olive!
I find cooking relaxing and satisfying and I think there is nothing like a kitchen that produces nourishing, wholesome food from scratch to make you feel loved, cared for and welcome in a home.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2012 03:18AM by Sunday.

This thread is fascinating to read. What an interesting bunch of cooks we are!

Thinking about it, I think I'm a meat cook more than anything else. I'm not really fond of fussy, clever desserts and I'm not a great baker. FIona is more of a baker and dessert person. I think it's because she's a bit more careful than I am about presentation and measuring ingredients.

I started cooking when I was in high school. We had a big family, so once we hit secondary school we were given a cooking night. It's a tradition we're carrying on with our kids too. It was a great move by Mum. We helped out at home by taking responsibility for one night's meal and we all left home knowing how to cook.

For us, cooking food from all over the world really spins our wheels. New ingredients are always exciting and if we ever discover that you're not from New Zealand then you may find yourself being interrogated about cooking and recipes! I do love anything chilli related and I am a big fan of smoky flavours.

-- Karl

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What Karl & Fiona have been cooking up!
[edibleplanet.wordpress.com]

...A FOOD LOVER. Good food is the eighth and most important wonder of the world.
I was brought up in a single income, 2 parent family with a mum who loved food. We were eating yoghurt before it was health food, broccoli and courgette the same. This was in the seventies/eighties. Can anyone else remember the days when you could buy a packet of biscuits on a Sunday at the dairy, but if Mum needed some flour, the shopkeeper would sneak his hand behind a canvas cover to pull out a bag of the highly illegal stuff that wasn't to be sold till the next day???
Present day: I too have addiction to food magazines -Vegetarian Living(UK), Vegetarian Times(US), Jamie are the ones I buy.And I love the food of Annabel Langbein, Denis Cotter, Sophie Grigson, Nigel Slater. Supermarkets, please forgive me for checking out the recipes in every mag on your stands(Remember the basics and give it a personal touch at a later stage).
In a past life I have worked in food industry where people appreciated the fresh food I chose to serve them, rather the remains of the previous shift.
If I have nothing to read, I read cook books. The local library in the city I live has to be one of the best in NZ (bless them) to help my addiction.
With the help of my local farmers' market and my vege garden, I aim to eat in season and test my tastebuds with different foods.
Yes, I need to do a Lite version of all the food I enjoy, one day. But alas, dear doctor, I am a food addict of which there is no cure

I travel as a hobby, and enjoy recreating and cooking the food I have tasted on my journeys. I love experimenting and trying different flavours...so if the recipe says capsicum, and I don't have any, I substitute a carrot or whatever. I dontreally care if it doesn't look like the photo. I try to get 3 cook books from the library, and try a different recipe each week. My children are honest, and tell me NOT to cook that again, (and can we have some noodles instead) or try it and like it, and guess at one or two of the different spices/flavourings in the meal. My 16yr old surprised me at a restaurant recently, when after tasting the dessert she told her friends that her dessert had a touch of cardamon. The looks on the faces suggested to me that several of her guests had no idea what she was on about.
I like to cook around themes, so when the rugby world cup was on, the children would pick recipes from whatever country was playing in Rotorua, or whoever was playing the all blacks. These were interesting meals as the children wanted 3 courses. This also helped my bonus children to be a little more adventurous, and go beyond "yuck I don't like" as we were having such varied meals and new food ideas. I have been thinking about doing something with the tour de France, perhaps a specialty from the area that the race is in that day perhaps, or the country of the rider who won a stage...
I try to involve my children in the whole process, choosing the theme, finding a suitable recipe that the ingredients are either in the pantry, the garden, or put on the shopping list. I try to get them to be responsible for some of the food prep and cooking.
Currently I am interested in the cooking styles of Persia and northern Africa, and the recipe books for several months hve reflected this. this has influenced me to put allspice in my basic tomato soup recipe, and more pepper, as a result of the flavor combinations I have been discovering.
I am fortunate to be married to a man who enjoys eating out, and trying new food. we are spoilt for choice in Rotorua. We haven't tried all the restaurants yet, but it is our plan, and always try something different.

During the week I rely on food lovers for advice and inspiration after 5pm, and need to feed a starving(apparently) family. I know I can trust the recipes, and really enjoy the non food related friendliness and support of Foodlovers. Thank you everyone, you are such wonderful, generous people. You have helped me in so many ways.

Have fun!
Ruth

Ruth, great things you are doing with your kids there to foster a sense of adventure with food

I was bought up on meat, potato and 2 veg and a stodgy pudding...my mother was rather old when I was born and she decided we didn't need to eat as much; so plates had plenty of white space on them!!

Got married and DH had to have deep pan fried chips every darn night, occasionally a strange roasted potato swimming in ???liquid.

I got absolutely over cooking in oily pans, as soon as the basket or the pan was beyond the pale, I would buy a new one. Also cutting the chips up from raw potato & drying in tea towels. They soon because awful and out they went!!!

There was no adventurous cooking happening...in fact, I can't face even grilling or pan frying a steak, chop or other! The closest I will come to that is a stir-fried 'strip'

Just writing this is bringing back yucky food memories :-) I now cook rather simple food - which neither Mum or DH would even venture into eating!!!!!

I'm really interested in all sorts of cooking but unfortunately the food doesn't like me- I put on weight by just thinking about eating! However, that doesn't stop me.

I love to try new foods and recipes and so do my grown-up kids. When they were small I would have loved them to be less adventurous! Why on earth wouldn't they eat the (cheaper) 'kids meals'?? But no, they wanted to try the ostrich or snails!

I work full time, but when I'm organised, I stick the menu for the week on the fridge. That way we get a much more varied diet and less brain-strain for me. Of course I do the boring meals when busy or lazy, but I'm always trying new recipes, probably at least 1 new recipe a week. I get recipe books from the library and subscribe to Cooks Illustrated magazine from Americas Test Kitchen - absolutely brilliant! And of course I have a large collection of recipe books of my own! My family and close friends are used to being guinea-pigs, and still come back for more!

I'm particularly interested in peasant cooking (see Elizabeth Luard), Jewish cooking (cos they do unusual things), Mediterranean food, and I find Nigel Slater and Jane Grigson really useful for garden produce.

I'm not a baker and I only make a pudding once a week, mainly for visitors. But we grow tons of stuff and experiment with all sorts of unusual or expensive fruit and veges. Many times I've dashed to the library (or google) to find out what to with a glut of kohlrabi or cavolo nero. And I hate to waste anything so I freeze and preserve and make jam and chutneys and cordial etc.

And right now we are in the middle of completely doing up our kitchen. I mean completely. The floor and windows had to be replaced because of borer or rot so we have taken the opportunity to re-do the entire thing. It has already been over a year since I drew the first plan and we now have a working hob and oven and sink. Nothing else. Not even lights. We have been camping in the (much-scrubbed) bathroom for 2 months. 'Tis very exciting, but oh how I wish they would do it faster!!

I'm getting hungry. DH is doing prawns in chilli sauce a la Nigel Slater for dinner tonight. Yum.