So Many Recipes... So Little Time

Happy Sunday Everyone!

Sunday is definitely a day for taking it easy and stocking up the freezer with lovely things to eat later in the month. Things like quiche and cake and chilli. Why slave over the stove after a hard day at work when you can leisurely batch cook a recipe for eight and freeze it in nice convenient portions? This is why when I have my own house, I am having a second freezer.

As well as a second freezer, when I have my own kitchen I fully intend to have not only a shelf but a full on bookcase in there dedicated to recipe books. I'm amassing a nice little collection already.

The problem is that I never seem to use these recipes. There just never seems to be time to make all the things I want to. I subscribe to a weekly cake magazine and I think in the 6 months or so I've been getting it I've only made 2 or 3 things from the series!

I can't be the only one doing this can I?

I love browsing my recipe books and dreaming about all the lovely things I could make but it just doesn't happen as often as I would like. The reasons for this I think are as follows:

1. Time: Time is a finite resource and cooking, especially a brand new recipe you've not tried before can be quite time consuming. I don't care what Jamie says. I can't whip up a meal in 15 minutes and if I'm trying something for the first time just working out how many bowls I'm going to need can take longer than that!
2. Cost: Trying a new recipe can often involve shelling out for new ingredients. Once you've got a store cupboard built up, flour, ground almonds, tins of tomatoes (the store cupboard works for sweet and savoury) you don't need to basics but there's always something you don't have. It might be fresh cream. It might be a particular type of cheese. Herbs or spices, it all adds up. Also, this comes back to time, traipsing around the supermarket.
3. Risk: This is, I think, the most important factor. The risk factor. Yes I could try that new biscuit recipe but what if it's horrible? I've spent all that time and money and effort to end up with something that might not even be tasty. It's just safer to make some snickerdoodles and be happy.

These things don't actually stop me trying new recipes. I decided to make snickerdoodles based entirely on the fact that I had seen them on one of my favourite TV shows. It wasn't even a cooking show and at no point did it explain what they were. But now I love them and they are one of my go-to recipes. But they do stop me trying new recipes as often as I would like to and that is rather sad. It's something that would like to change.

Pip pip, Charlotte x