Do you really use recipes?

Cook books are redundant nowadays in my home.Tend to go online. There is a great website where you put in your ingredients that you want to use and it comes up with recipes. Or I use BBC good food site. I'm making pot of chilli this weekend to freeze, good for meals or with jacket and salad for lunch.

and as for the soup maker - what's in the fridge goes in, full stop!

I used to experiment a lot with recipes or my variation on them, but currently in a living situation where we are apart for a few days a week, and drifted into seeing what i could make from what we have in, or a lazy meal for 2 for £10. When I look things up it is often online these days. I did wonder whether to get a Spicery subscription and use their spices and recipes, as i seem to have bought everyone else one!

We have a modest shelf full of cookery books, but I tend to return to the same three over and over. My particular favourite is a Marks and spencer cook book /I was given about 35 years ago. It has great pavlova and profiterole recipes which became stock favourites for me and a good guide for cooking different cuts of meat. I actually spoilt my first copy - the pages got stuck together over the years , but my daugther found me a replacement on Amazon.

If I want to try something new these days I am most likely to look online and have found the BBC Good Food website the best on several occasions.

And then there are those 'experimental bologneaises and casseroles - chuck in and hope and if it comes out really well, the chances are I will never be able to make it the same again!

I don't really innovate much on the recipe front, as my DH is a bit conservative on food. It takes decades for him to 'like' something.... I do try out soups, which only I eat. But I also have a food sensitivity problem, as do many members of my family, and so that leads to me often googling for suggestions, and yes, BBC Good Food is often a front runner. Re recipe books, I love the old Good Housekeeping ones from the late 1940s, but often just for the descriptions and wonderful adverts. I'm currently contemplating ditching all my recipe books bar a couple of TNT ones, just for extra space.

I only do 'special' and a recipe when we have visitors.
Otherwise pot luck!

I use them for baking because you do need to be accurate. Otherwise I probably follow a recipe a couple of times before I move on to making my own version of it.

No I don't do recipes. In fact my cooking does not really consist of proper recipes - lots of steamed fish and vegetables, salads and stuff. Stews contain whatever is lying around. Baked potatoes and rice. Nothing fancy.

I know how to make a victoria sponge and bread without a recipe - and there is a local lady who makes great cakes and sells them at the village shop, so I get those.

I have used Mary's recipes, not generally something I have seen on the tv but I google them.
Her lemon meringue pie was yummy, the special lasagne was delicious but took a lot of preparation.

Probably because I followed the recipes for once and didn't just throw things in without weighing!

Does anyone use Mary Berry's recipes. Some, no, most of the dishes she does on her programme look yummy!

Love to read them, especially Nigel Slater's, and have quite a lot. Use them sometimes but since joining Slimming World I've used theirs more to make sure I've no 'hidden Syns'.
I like to look what's left in the fridge and find a recipe to fit.

I really love cookery books and read them like novels, sometimes I get ideas for new meals. Usually it's just the same old faithfuls, though!

I also invent recipes.

I have lots of usual recipes that I just do from memory but I love to experiment with new recipes.
I love the BBC Good Food and put in an ingredient to see what I can do with things that need using up.

I use old favourite recipes that exist in my head, I use the Internet for inspiration and I do new recipes from books. My latest is Persiana, with gorgeous recipes for Middle -Eastern cuisine.

I don't cook a massive meal every day - tonight the chippy supplied our dinner! We often have something simple like beans on toast if we've been out for lunch.

I've acquired a slow cooker after my dd1 received a ne wine as a wedding present and I've enjoyed using that. I make enough to freeze two portions so we can have an easy meal some evenings.

Although I have over a hundred cookery books, I try to use as many fresh recipes as possible. It's so terminally boring to cook the same old war-horses over and over again. After all I've been doing it for nearly sixty years, and its so easy to allow yourself and your cookery to be come boring.
Of course, there's no harm in a slightly cynical, "retro" prawn cocktail; but modern cookery is such fun,fun fun.

Because I'm old and don't own a car, I have all my shopping delivered once a week; which means that by the end of each week there is a motley assortment of odds and ends lurking in the fridge, daring me to find a glamourous new life for them.
That's when I, too, turn to BBC Good Food.
Type in the main items (or usual suspects as I tend to think of them.) and the good old beeb comes up with a usually brilliant suggestion
I then just print off one coppy, and start to wield my spatula.
If something is a total disaster, there's always , 'something I prepared earlier"
- in the freezer.

I use the internet too for new ideas. Trying to get away from meaty meals I need inspiration for the many alternatives, using fish and vegetables.
I used to have many recipe books, most lost now, but I still use a Rose Elliot veg. cook book, and a book about different breads around the world. Also a book that Son no. 2 gave me, Supersavers cookbook, which gives recipes for each season of the year.

Although I have a good selection of recipe books, I probably use the Internet more for new ideas. Go to website is BBC Good Food, easy to navigate and recipes can be saved on the site.

Yes I do. Not all the time but it's nice to try new ideas. I'm not good at experimenting from scratch but once I've got a recipe under my belt I will tweak and add a bit or reduce a bit. My cookery book shelf is full and I always write the date I first tried a recipe and the outcome and there are a lot of scribbling so in my books. Haven't got a daughter to pass them on to but someone might be interested in the future...

I do you recipes but more for baking than main meals- baking seems to need more precision.

I enjoy cooking and have many dishes that I cook from memory but love finding new recipes to try. I do also try making up my own and write down what I'm doing as I go . That way we can have it again. I love looking through cookery book of all kinds and frequently use the internet.

We have favourite recipes which we have used forever but also search for things on the internet but whatever we do we often tweak the recipe to what ingredients we actually have or to our own taste.
DH does most of the cooking nowadays and always has a recipe, he enjoys cooking fortunately and is very good at it.
His famous fish pie tonight - very yummy!

I do quite a lot of googling for recipes these days. I have all the Hairy Bikers books, but don't often consult them. I usually just read a recipe and then go away into the kitchen and concoct my own version with what I have in the cupboards.

DD does make some lovely celeb chef dinners. James Martin is my first choice (for her to cook)

No! Hate recipes. Puts a chore into cooking.

Best to make it up as you go along.