A food journal

This journal is borne out of a comment made by my partner. I often experiment with new meals, based purely on the ingredients I have in and a bit of inspiration from a recipe book. Often, the food I cook does not strictly follow a recipe (who has all those ingredients to hand anyway?) but is a adaptation from Nigel Slater or something I printed off the internet. My partner is always worried I will forget what I've made because I just made it up and haven't written it down. So, I've created this blog to house details of all the food I have made and want to remake. I probably won't include any of the disasters here; only the meals that worked out :-). Although I've been inspired by Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries, this isn't an attempt to recreate that here. For one, I am nowhere near as proficient as Mr. Slater. I just want a space to keep my recipes so that I don't forget them so I won't be posting a food diary of what I eat every single day. It also goes without saying that if I use someone else's recipe, I will credit them.

If you read my other blog, A Norwood Garden you will see that I am hoping to grow some of my own vegetables this year. If things work out, they will make an appearance in some of my dishes. Here are a few of my thoughts on food and my approach to cooking.

I'm not someone who has been cooking for years and years. I started to get into cooking a few years back. Before that, I ate lots of nicely prepared M&S and Tesco meals. I began to enjoy cooking more creatively when my mum gave me a few recipes to try. Nothing madly adventurous but good food that tasted good and I could make when we had a few friends round. I have probably made salmon and spinach lasagne for everyone I know and it is still a firm favourite in our house. Since then, I have become more adventurous and much more confident in my cooking. I still have so much to learn though. We started to get an organic veg box from Abel and Cole two years back and this helped me to branch out a bit. We were getting all sorts of veg and I had to become flexible and creative in my cooking in order to use it all up. I sought out new recipes and made up meals as I went along in a 'Ready, Steady, Cook' type manner and found that I really enjoyed it.

For me, cooking in the evening has become a great way of relaxing. I get home from work, pour myself a glass of wine and see what is in the fridge or cupboard. I open a book for some inspiration and then get to work. If I have time during the day, I might look up a few recipes on the web based on what ingredients I have at home.

My values regarding food have changed. I try not to eat too much processed food now. I like to know what is in my food and am wary of the contents of prepared foods. I would rather buy the raw ingredients and make my meals from scratch wherever possible. Sometimes this is hard as I work full time and have a three hours round commute each day, but I try as much as possible to avoid pre-prepared foods.

I am also learning lots about ethical issues surrounding food and have found lots of useful advice and debate on the River Cottage website. I am a huge fan of online forums. I have found them invaluable in engaging in issues around food, ethics and the community in which I live. I will probably mention them a lot in this blog.

One further note, some of recipes will not be very accurate. I am not going to write down exactly the amounts I use of ingredients. I often don't measure things out anyway. I will just be getting down in writing the basics of what I made the night before whilst I can still remember. This journal is primarily just to jog my memory when I want to recreate something I made weeks back. However, if it inspires anyone else that is huge bonus. All comments are most welcome.