How much of a "recipe backlog" do you have?

The Late Night Gourmet

The Late Night Gourmet

Home kook
Joined
30 Mar 2017
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Location
Detroit, USA
Website
absolute0cooking.com
I have an almost constant disparity between what I want to make and what I have time to make. It doesn't help that I keep finding new awesome things that I want to make; @CraigC's excellent Clear Soup With Cellophane Noodles recipe is the latest one to be added to the list.

But, I'm saying that last sentence as if there's a formal "list". Sometimes, there are just general ideas of what I want to make, while other times there are more specific ideas. Whether I make them or not depends greatly on a few things:
  • Personal Demand - Do I need the food for lunch the next day?
  • Family Demand - Does my family want or need for me to make something? The light bagels I posted recently are now a regular requirement (for me, too!).
  • The Means - Do I have the equipment (almost always "yes") and the ingredients (sometimes "no") I need?
  • Is There a Sporting Event I Want to Watch? The NBA playoffs are underway, and I've been spending a lot of time watching DVR replays (they're in the early rounds, so it's every day). I often cook while I watch, but this does slow things down.
  • Opportunity - I have a limited amount of time to make things, and I have to balance the above and see what happens
Here are the things that I have ingredients to make, but I just haven't had the time to put together. Note that my preference would be to make them first, and then post the results. But, maybe this will shame me into getting around to doing them. None of them seem to be time-consuming, but something always seems to be getting in the way:
  • Turnip Fries (I just got an Air Fryer, which is still in the box)
  • Something smoked (I have a smoker I bought last year that's also still in the box)
  • Banana-Blueberry Sorbet
  • Brussels Sprouts Frittata - DONE!
  • Cauliflower Tortillas
  • Clear Soup with Cellophane Noodles
  • Whatever the next thing that I see on TV or on this forum prompts me to make :laugh:
 
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When the food magazines roll in, we almost always find something we want to try, and then there are the cooking and "best things, good eats" type shows, plus the forums, and all our cookbooks (hard and E). More often than not, at least 1 if not more recipes get forgotten about because we simply don't have time to make them all since there only so many days in the week/month. We like to try new recipes and cuisines, but we have favorites too that we always go back to.
 
We also have a couple of homemade books with magazine and newspaper recipe clippings. I don't think we have made more than 20 out of the hundreds in it. Granted we have made some of that 20 many times. It seems that for everyone you actually make 20 to 30 new ones are coming at you.
 
Yes - a huge recipe backlog here. I try to prioritise recipe development - meaning developing my own recipes and I have a huge back-log of ideas to try out. But then there are all the recipes on TV, on this forum, in magazines (less so these days) and on the internet that I want to try. I usually come across the latter when researching ingredients and processes.

I'm becoming more picky and try to only cook things to discover new techniques and tastes. My rule is to try to develop one new recipe a week.

But - I'm a sucker for challenges and recently got completely side tracked by @SatNavSaysStraightOn's Invention Test. It was a great discipline - working with only a limited number of ingredients and I may have learned something. But it sent me right off track!
 
Hugh backlog. One problem is my minute kitchen. I do get to play in my mum's kitchen once every couple of weeks but I usually want to spend time with my parents rather than be in a different room.

I've been given a few recipe books recently I really must try out. One is Jewish; one Chinese with suggested gluten/dairy/meat free versions; a book on gluten free baking that i really need to master.
 
I tend to copy or print off recipes I'd like to make. Then when the pile gets too large I'll go through the pile and use those I've gone off the idea of for lighting the fire. Luckily thst isn't usually many because I've become very careful over the number I print off. I learnt my lesson 7 years ago when we went off to chuckle around the world. I had to go through the homemade recipe books and scan in the recipes we really wanted. I had a rule that in order to qualify for scanning we had to have made the recipe more than once. It was amazing how many we'd either never made or had only been made the once. Now add a result, I've extra careful and not just from that but from an environmental point of view as well as money saving. I don't need to waste the ink either!

So whilst I do have a list of things to make it isn't the longest of lists of biggest of piles of paper, assuming I ever find them again after the house move. I do have 20-30 bookmarks of recipes though!
 
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Well...one down on my list: Bacon, Brussells Sprouts, and Cheddar Frittata.
 
Don't even ask - I must have thousands, in cookery books, in my OneNote, and in folders. I tend to find that, if I like something, I will cook it regularly - if I don't like something or the recipe doesn't seem to work, it gets a tweak, and if it still doesn't work I never try it again.
 
Just added another one, Pastelon de Platano Maduro. It is a pie made with ripe plantains for a bottom with a meat filling and plantain top. The plantain mixture includes cheddar cheese.
 
Well you see the local charity bookshop had this big sale to raise money for the library and was selling off donated books and they had a bunch of cookbooks...real nice ones with pictures and some with interesting topic like baking with no fat(is this really a thing). It was $2 a bagful and the bags were those handled plastic grocery store sacks. I amazed the attendents with my ability to fill a bag with books...i bought two bags and one is filled with cookbooks and the other craft books and maybe some fiction tucked in the narrow parts of the bag. So i just started to earmark the recipes that look interesting...we won't speak of the cookbooks that already overflow my shelf.
 
oddduck said:
Well you see the local charity bookshop had this big sale to raise money for the library and was selling off donated books and they had a bunch of cookbooks...real nice ones with pictures and some with interesting topic like baking with no fat(is this really a thing). It was $2 a bagful and the bags were those handled plastic grocery store sacks. I amazed the attendents with my ability to fill a bag with books...i bought two bags and one is filled with cookbooks and the other craft books and maybe some fiction tucked in the narrow parts of the bag. So i just started to earmark the recipes that look interesting...we won't speak of the cookbooks that already overflow my shelf.
Click to expand...

I've simply had to stop buying them. No shelf space left!
 
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