Problems and suggestions
I hope you’ve been enjoying my recipes! If you ran into a problem making one, or have a suggestion, please leave a comment on that recipe’s blog post so that I can address it publicly (I check daily).
If you email me with a question instead of posting it in the comments, I may post your question anonymously. When I answer questions on the blog instead of in email, I can help more people, and avoid answering the same question multiple times.
Note that if you’ve changed ingredients or cooking methods, I may not be able to help.
Weight Watchers
I used to include Weight Watchers info in some recipes, but with the recent changes to the Weight Watchers program, this is no longer possible. I still sometimes make suggestions on how to adapt a recipe for your own Weight Watchers plan.
Prep Time
I’ve done my best to estimate how long it takes me to prep all ingredients in one go, but to be honest, that’s just not how I cook! Whenever possible I try to prep the more difficult ingredients in the morning, or have someone help me. And none of that will lead to an accurate prep time. Besides, everybody preps at a different speed. I consider myself to be pretty slow. So if you’re a fast prepper, you can probably knock some time off of my estimates.
To help with prep, I list ingredients with their prep method in the ingredients list. That way, if you want to look at the ingredients ahead of time, you’ll be able to see “Oh, those carrots need to be sliced. I can do that now.” If an ingredient can’t be prepped ahead (hello, avocados and potatoes!), its prep method will be listed in the instructions at the appropriate time. I’m also in the process of adding a “Prep Ahead” list to the notes of each recipe, so that you can quickly see which ingredients can be prepped ahead, and which can be stored together.
Ingredients
When I’m writing out recipes for myself, I do a few things that help me out while I’m cooking. I generally write my recipes out in the Paprika app, and add recipes from cookbooks and websites there as well, so a lot of what I do is informed by how I use that app.
Why do I include things like water in the ingredients list? Because if I decide to prep my ingredients before I start cooking, get together my mise en place if you will, nothing is more frustrating than getting to a point in a recipe where I’m stirring ingredients in a hot pan, and I realize I need to add two cups of water. Why wasn’t that listed in the ingredients?? So I try to help you out by including that.
Why do I include ingredient amounts in the ingredient list, but not in the instructions? I do this wherever practical because while the recipe program I use on my blog does not yet have the ability to scale ingredients up or down, it probably will some day, but it probably won’t scale the ingredient in the instructions. So if I list “1 tablespoon olive oil” in the ingredients and then write “Put 1 tablespoon of olive oil into a pan over medium-high heat” and then you double the recipe, the amounts will change in the ingredients list, but not the instructions, and you would be rightfully confused about how much olive oil to add at that time. This is also why I try to list ingredients in separate sections, like “Crust” and “Filling”.
Why do I sometimes include very specific ingredients, like a certain brand? In some recipes, one brand just works best, and I’ll try to make a note when that’s the case.
Why don’t I include substitutions for every recipe, like different kinds of flour? If I happen to know that substituting a particular ingredient won’t hurt the recipe, I’ll mention it—I don’t want you to have to chase down ingredients if you have a good substitute already. But sometimes a particular ingredient really is necessary, at least as far as can tell (I can’t test out all possibilities!). If you try a substitution, please let everyone know how it went in the comments.
Why do I include grams in some recipes, ounces/pounds in some recipes, and volume measurements in others? When I bake, I tend to use grams, since those measurements often need to be more precise. When I’m cooking, the exact amounts usually aren’t as crucial, so I usually use ounces and pounds. And if I just haven’t figured out the weights yet, or for some other reason I don’t use weights for those ingredients, I use volume measurements.
I try to give you options, but honestly, it’s better to just use a scale (here’s mine). You’ll have less to clean up, and your baked goods will turn out better.
Recipe Apps and Sharing
You might have heard that food bloggers hate recipe collection apps like Paprika, Big Oven, Recipe Keeper, and Copy Me That. Well, I don’t really consider myself a food blogger, but most of my income does come from food posts, so I have some opinions on this.
As a cook, I love the Paprika App. I can collect all of my recipes in one place, change them as I see fit, add notes, sort them, search them, scale them, etc. I recommend this app often.
As a blogger, I understand the complaint that these apps take away repeat traffic from blogs. However, I don’t expect repeat traffic for the same post, because as a blog reader I don’t think it’s practical:
- I can’t take notes on someone’s blog page
- I can’t make changes to a recipe
- I can’t search all of my favorite recipes for ingredients that I happen to have in my fridge
- The recipe could disappear or change
This last one just happened to me again. I’d had a yearly subscription to a video cooking site, and had made a fantastic risotto recipe several times, but had never bothered to download it or write it out in any way. And now it’s gone.
So, I appreciate the first visit, and I hope that readers come back to check out other posts and recipes, but I completely understand the value of these apps.
All I ask is that if you want to share one of my recipes with someone else, you share the link to my post, not a downloaded copy that you made.