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03-28-2007, 10:19 PM
Re: (...)
I receive some cooking magazines containing very nice photgraphy, but I have several cookbooks that I rarely use because there are not any (or very few) photos of the recipes. I guess that I need to know what the dish will look like in order to make that recipe appeal to me. It's one thing to imagine it, but certainly another to see what the author comes up with.
Is this important to anyone else? Or am I (gulp!) odd???
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You are not odd- I love the pics too. I just got a new cookbook from Amazon that I am loving. There is a picture of EVERY SINGLE recipe! It's Martha Stewart's new one from her EVERYDAY FOOD magazine- "Great Food Fast" About 250 recipes all with pics. Wonderful. The recipes look great. I photograph everything I make and post it on my website. I find that if the picture looks appealing to you, then you have a better time imagining what it would be like to prepare/eat it- as well as the obvious in knowing what it's supposed to look like when finished!
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I prefer a lot of pictures, preferably color pictures. That's one factor that caused me to puchase
C@H in the first place. I can pretty much tell with a quick glance if something deserves a further look.
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pictures are nice - great for plating ideas, but I guess not that important to me. Thinking about it, I normally look at the list of ingredients the first thing, a picture would be a bonus.
Retired and having fun writing cookbooks, tasting wine and sharing recipes with all my friends.
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I find that the pictures in the cookbook really whet my appetite to try some of the meals that I might have overlooked. Especially with cuisines that I'm not real familar with, I can look at the picture and see what it's supposed to look like. LOL, some of my interpretations have come out...let's say 'different'.
I just love thumbing through a beautiful cookbook.
Jan
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Quote:
pictures are nice - great for plating ideas, but I guess not that important to me. Thinking about it, I normally look at the list of ingredients the first thing, a picture would be a bonus.
Jean, I'm thinking that's probably because you are actually a real chef and can "taste" the dish with your mind, and don't need the picture to help you with presentation because you already know how you want it to look when you plate it.
For myself, I always like the pictures because it's also nice to see how it's presented, what type of dish or platter, garnish, etc.
Maryann
Maryann
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I'm a visual kind of person, so I do love those pictures!!! But, when I really thought about it, the cookbooks I use the most have not one picture in them so, I think I agree with Jean that they are a bonus..
Practice safe lunch. Use a condiment.
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Quote:
But, when I really thought about it, the cookbooks I use the most have not one picture in them so, I think I agree with Jean that they are a bonus..
I never thought about this until now, but I only have 1 cookbook that has pictures, a 1960-something Betty Crocker. I do have several Williams Sonoma books, but they didn't justify the bookshelf space so they're packed away.
For the last year or 2, I've been cooking out of
C@H (gotta love those pictures) or CI (an itsy-bitsy color thumbnail on the last page). Haven't bought a cookbook in quite some time-there are so many things in the mags that I want to try I'd drive myself
with a new cookbook.
But pictures are nice
PJ
PJ
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I'd drive myself with a new cookbook.
You are quite right about that one. I'm driving myself crazy with new cookbooks. A bit of an obsession, but I do find that reading them is quite interesting. Most of my best new recipes come from mags (I have way too many subscriptions), and recs from good people in the forums.
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Nope, not odd at all. I've been known to buy a cookbook just because of the beautiful food porn in it!
Lori, I saw Martha's new cookbook at Sam's Club when I blew through there earlier today, but I didn't have time to really look at it. Hopefully they'll still have copies when I go back this weekend so I can look it over better. What little I did see of it looked pretty good.