We get a physical monthly magazine from our local Swedish grocery store chain that is chock-full of recipes. It’s named Buffé and it is, indeed, that, in terms of instructions on putting food together. Neither Anders nor I cook much anymore, though he’s much more likely to whip together a tomato and onion soup if we have crushed tomatoes in the pantry. I think about cooking like I think about posting here…a great deal of it happens only in my head.
I just spent an hour going through the backlog of magazines in the basket, with the intent of recycling. Usually, when I get the magazines, I read through them, and then toss them in the basket. I rarely make anything from them and I know I’ll go through them again at some point (sometimes up to a year later) when the basket gets full. As far as collections go, one of “recipes you will never make” is pretty lame, but hey! It’s what I’ve got. These are the recipes that appealed to me this time, which I carefully tore out of the magazines, in no particular order:
- Jerusalem artichoke canapés with pickled mustard seeds
- Canapés with seared salmon and avocado yogurt
- Swedish almond macaroon (biskvi) sheet cookies with caramel and salted almonds
- Caramel cookies with pecans
- Celeriac and Jerusalem artichoke soup with mushrooms and horseradish
- Gino (baked fruits with white chocolate)
- Pointed/Sweetheart cabbage (spetskål**) salad with creamy tarragon dressing
- Grilled salmon with ginger and lime-honey
- White chocolate cake with lemon and rhubarb
- Mini pinsa with pesto, burrata, and pine nuts
- Tartiflette
- American gingerbread pancakes with sautéd apples
- Saffron cookies with lingonberries
- Swedish almond macaroon cake
I ask people for recipes of things they have served me at various dinners and parties all the time. They usually send them to me via email, and I have a special folder in Gmail labeled “Recipes” where I save them. When I think about it, which is apparently not that often (see “not cooking much anymore”), I print them out and add them to the growing pile of recipes on paper that are shoved in between cookbooks in the kitchen. Right now there are 21 emails in that folder. All of these magazine pages that I’ve torn out will also be added to those shelved piles. I might make something from one of them some time! I MIGHT! You never know!
We currently have 27 cookbooks, including the one my mother put together and gifted to me when I graduated from college and the one I put together of our favorite family recipes (which includes a lot of the recipes from my mother’s book). In addition, on the “cookbook shelf” there are 11 Martha Stewart magazines (including 5 “Everyday Food”) that were mostly saved because of the cookie recipes. There is also a inch-wide sheaf of Hello Fresh recipe cards that were the ones we liked best and ordered the most. All of these have been kept with the intention of actually making something from the recipes within, though I can say that generally speaking we use the same recipes over and over: I cook from the family favorites, and Anders tends to go for the two classic Swedish cookbooks he had as a young man.
Anders likes to cook. I don’t. He’s almost always the one who cooks when we have guests or host dinners or parties, though I might help with menu suggestions and ideas. I’m usually the one who grocery shops, cleans in advance, sets the table, and does the dishes. SOMETIMES I’ll contribute with a side dish or dessert. Of all the recipes that we have, that I have collected over the years, the ones that are most likely to get made, by me at least, are the cookie recipes.
I LOVE cookies. Even though I typically only bake cookies at Christmas, I’m always happy to eat them any time. And I’m always on the lookout for a new cookie recipe that will be easy and work well for the AIC holiday cookie exchange. That recipe up there, caramel cookies with pecans, looks like just the thing for this year!
Even if I never make any of the recipes in the papers I’ve saved, they are still fun to collect, and when I look back at the ones I have made or have eaten at a friend’s home, they awaken cozy memories of good food and good times. And there’s always a chance that I’ll get around to the others. Maybe when I retire, I’ll find a long-buried desire to start cooking. Or maybe I’ll hand them to Anders after HE retires and see if I can get him to make them. Yeah, that’s the ticket! *rubs hands together sneakily and grins*
Or we could just go out for sushi. 😀
Really good writing out there right now: Text is king
*Dean Young
**When I googled what spetskål is in English, one person on Reddit had written “Ponty tonky grönkål badonky” which made me laugh out loud.
Mood: hungry
Music: Kelis—Breakfast