| Product: |
BBC Good Food |
| Date: |
17/06/05 (303 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Super recipes, Reasonably priced
Disadvantages: Lots of magazines to keep, Eat too much!
Presents should be something the recipient would like and not just what the sender would like to receive! Although in the case of the present I am going to review it was something both parties enjoyed!
My daughter and son-in-law gave me a subscription to BBC Good Food. Now she might have left home, but they do frequently come for dinner and so like to have something different to eat. This was a truly wonderful gift, the results of which have been enjoyed by my family and friends. Good Food magazine gives me lots of ideas as well as providing me with a magazine I can browse through “to my hearts content”.
That expression leads me on to say, that you can look after your heart and cook exciting meals as the recipes are all under descriptive headings! I will tell you more about that later though.
+PRICE+
Buying it over the counter it is £2.50 each month. In the magazine you can order a subscription and have it delivered for the same price and receive a bonus gift, this varies from month to month, and the gift in the August edition is a rubberwood bowl worth £9.99. You also receive a monthly news letter with offers and also a discount card, which you can use at about 300 cook shops – although I have never used mine living in Scotland as there wasn’t one locally! Alternatively you can order at a reduction of 16% and forego the free gift, making the cost £25 a year. I have discovered a better price by using my Tesco Clubcard vouchers and can get a year’s subscription of Good Food for only £7.50 worth of vouchers! I call that a bargain, I’m really enjoying spending my vouchers now rather than taking it as money off my bill!
+DESCRIPTION+
It is a colourful glossy magazine, easy to read and has an excellent contents page and a very useful recipe index. There are a lot of adverts, mostly food based or electrical equipment, but I don’t find them too over powering compared with some magazines. Near the back are around 6 pages under the heading of “Classified”. These have a mixture of adverts, I have seen various courses advertised, even residential courses abroad or even a few holiday opportunities with excellent food, e- mail addresses for organic produce or specialised cookware and foods. But certainly nothing “Tacky!”
+INFORMATION+
All recipes are tested in the Good Food kitchen, and readers also make and sample some of the recipes each month and give their views.
They suggest for recipe success using Organic ingredients, I have never done this and have never had a problem. Large eggs should be used in recipes unless stated otherwise and you should follow either the metric or imperial measurements! I must admit I do like using the imperial best, but have sometimes tried to be a little more modern and used the metric, but never a mixture of the two!
Gillian Carter is the Editor and is trying to keep the magazine up to date by giving a new look to some of the pages, but promises that one thing they won’t change is providing the best Food magazine money can buy.
The magazine staff are named and contact information is clearly listed. Like Prima which I have reviewed recently Good Food is available in audio format from the Talking Newspaper Association so it is a good gift for blind people who enjoy cooking.
+RECIPE INDEX+
I like the fact there is a separate index for the recipes from the contents page, it makes it easy to glance through the index for the last half dozen magazines looking for that recipe you want for using prawns etc. instead of having to look through the complete magazines.
All the recipes in each magazine are listed under the following headings, starters, vegetarian, fish, meat, chicken, duck and game, baking and desserts and lastly extras. Most of the recipes have a colour coded dot beside them if they fall into a certain category, for instance Easy, low fat, superhealthy etc.
Superhealthy recipes are low in saturated fat, 5g or less per portion; low in salt: low in added sugar 5g or less; and at least one of the following – provides one third or more of the daily requirement of fibre, iron, calcium, folic acid and/or vitamin C or counts as one or two portions of your “5 a day fruit and vegetables”.
Low fat recipes have 12g or less per portion.
Healthy recipes are well balanced with the emphasis on health but not necessarily low in fat.
Heart healthy is low in Saturated fat with 5g or less, and low in salt with 1.5g or less but high in omega 3-fatty acids.
Vegetarian recipes are suitable for vegetarian!
A frost symbol means it can be frozen and should the symbol have a red line through it then it is not suitable.
There is also a list at the end of each recipe with the breakdown per portion of protein, carbohydrate and fat, and the amount of kcals per portion. Also the amount of fibre, added sugar and salt this is helpful if your young children eat the same food as you do, the RDA or recommended daily amounts are listed as well on the recipe index page. Adults should have a maximum of 6g of salt a day, if you eat lots of processed food and sprinkle salt on your meals you could be eating too much – this is helpful especially if you have someone on a low salt diet as I do. High salt intake is associated with high blood pressure, which can be associated with strokes, heart disease and kidney failure. I must not get onto my high horse here! But please bear will me a moment, many labels have the sodium content listed instead of salt so it makes people think it is low in salt but 1gram of sodium is the equivalent of 2.5g of salt so that packet of crisps containing 0.2g of sodium is really 0.5g of salt, add to that a bowl of cornflakes and a couple of slices of bread and you’ve eaten quite a lot of salt! What I am trying to say here is these recipes are excellent in guiding you on a healthy lifestyle and I believe we should look after ourselves and our families and the recipes are so delicious no one would know they are good for them too! Beware there are some really calorific things too for a treat! But you can always be careful the next day and balance things out, or shall we say that is the theory but I didn’t always but it into practice!
+CONTENTS+
As you can imagine there are lots of recipes, but each month there is a page for kitchen confidential, a chatty page with news about new foods and food events. There is a letter page, where you can win a prize and a calendar recipe for that month. A page where readers can ask questions and find a solution for their food dilemmas! A page devoted to a readers recipe, with a bit about them and a lovely colour photo of the recipe, often this is someone from a different country so it adds a colourful flavour to the magazine.
There are some offers for kitchen equipment, but beware do check first you may find it cheaper elsewhere! I thought the ice cream maker was expensive compared with mine, but it does have a spare bowl to freeze ready, so you could make two sorts in one day, which might be a very helpful solution in a bigger family.
There are always articles and recipes on foods in season, although now we can buy most things all the year round, although I always think Scottish strawberries taste much better than the hard foreign produce we get at Christmas! There is a section on TV cookery which gives listings on what is on for that month, a bit about them and also for radio. Perhaps an article about someone setting up a small business with some food product, this month there was an article about various holiday places in this country and where you can buy the best cream tea and fish and chips.
Each month there is Everyday food section, with something easy to make for dinner, a recipe entitled take 5 ingredients, for people who like a simple idea, my favourite when I wrote this was a Bake of the Moment for Peach and Almond Muffins, it was under the heading of “Easy” and Low in Fat and used up some of the fresh peaches I bought which all turned from brick hard to ripe on the same day! They were lovely as suggested warm with crème fraiche at dinner time, I froze some and had one for breakfast, very versatile and so easy to make. Delicious. If you want the recipe buy the magazine! Or I might tell you if you’re good!
In the August 2004 edition there are 95 recipes. I admit I would not make them all! But they often give you an idea how to change an ingredient in something else you serve. For instance we often have Smoked salmon – it is possible to buy a value Pack sometimes in Tesco so this isn’t as extravagant as it may sound! Good Food has a lovely recipe using smoked salmon and sliced strawberries served on a bed of rocket and sliced fennel, and drizzled with a honey and mustard dressing. I had never thought of using the two S’s together. Perhaps you don’t like or can’t get a Fennel bulb then miss it out! The salmon and strawberries taste lovely even on an ordinary salad leaf bed, experimenting is fun!
They may be a pull section as in this month, which is on summer fruits. I’ve tried the lovely Smoothie with Bananas, summer fruits and apple juice. No fat and packed full of vitamins, a great start to the day or if you prefer something more sophisticated a Berry daiquiri! If the sun would return I can imagine lying outside sipping one of these!
Sometimes there are step by step pictures taking you through each stage of making a dish, useful if you are a beginner. But as the recipes are coded and the majority seem to fall in the EASY bracket beginners know what to try.
I keep my magazines for years and then I am forced to cut out the recipes I want to keep as I run out of space. There are some recipes from a few years ago I still love, like the Best Tiramisu, and it really is the BEST! Not good for me at the moment though but I will make it again for a treat.
Now, what shall we have for dinner? I think it needs to be something QUICK! Where’s my magazine gone? Who's got my Good Food magazine.........
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AJ26 - 07/08/05 I got a subscription to this as a present enjoy looking for new recipes |
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