| Product: |
BBC Good Food |
| Date: |
19/09/02 (291 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Good pictures, Tasty recipes, Easy to read
Disadvantages: Advertisements, Not enough veggie recipes
BBC Good Food magazine claims to be Britain's Best Selling Food Magazine... I can quite believe it!
The Good Food magazine is full of inspiration and ideas that will make even the most novice of 'cooks' feel like they could be Delia Smith for a while...
The magazine itself typically has a large picture of some delicious looking main meal on the front cover underneath the large bold title of the magazine. Additionally you get all the attention grabbing headlines that tempt you to look inside, such as 'All the low fat recipes you'll ever need', or 'What to eat for a good night's sleep' and the likes. If the cover manges to grab your attention, then you'll soon be venturing beneath the glossy cover to see what's inside...
As with most magazines these days, the inside cover, and often the first page seem to be adorned with advertisements. After these adverts you'll find the contents page. BBC Good Food has to be praised for the clear and easy to read layout of their contents page and the fact that the vast majority of the pages of the magazine have page numbers on, making flicking to the article you want to read much more easy than some magazines. You'll also find a miniature picture of the front cover on the contents page, with arrows pointing to where each of the headlines on the cover page are showing which page number they are on.
The contents don't stop there though... on the following page you will find a Recipe Index, which lists all the recipes contained within the edition of the magazine, clearly separated under headings of Starters, Vegetarian, Meat, Baking and Desserts etc making it easier to search out the recipes you may have spotted whilst flicking through. Not only that, but the majority of recipes are also given a colour coding to show you at a glance whether they are 'easy recipes', 'TV recipes' etc.
The recipes within the magazine
tend are normally quite seasonal - for example in the most recent edition that you will find in the shops (October 2002) there are plenty of warm savoury dishes, in the summer you're likely to find more lighter snack type meals and salads, and at Christmas, plenty of ideas for Christmas dinner! The recipe's within the magazine cater for allsorts of needs. There are recipes that cater specifically for one or two people, recipes for family meals, vegetarian recipes and low fat recipes. Being a vegetarian myself it's nice to see that vegetarian recipes aren't missed out, however it would be good to see more vegetarian recipes in the magazine, in particular since I believe the Vegetarian Good Food magazine is no longer available (the last time I saw a copy of the Vegetarian Good Food magazine was last Christmas, therefore presumabl it was a special edition).
In addition to recipes, the magazine is crammed with interesting articles that will appeal to most people who do at least a little bit of cooking, such as information on new tried and tested products, advice on the best utensils and kitchen gadgets and undercover shopping reports.
As with most magazines there is also a readers letters section, normally containing readers responses to articles printed within previous issues of the magazines or readers own experiences (food related of course).
The majority of people out there enjoy the occasioanly freebie, and occasionally this magazine will come with a free gift - normally something simple but useful, like a spatula, or a whisk. For those who shop at supermarkets that accept any coupons no matter what you are purchasing, the magazine also tends to contain a few money-off vouchers within the advertisements.
The magazine is priced at £2.30 and is issued monthly. Personally I tend to buy the magazine every 3-4 months as I do not get enough out of it to warrant purchasing it on a regular basis as although I do coo
k I'm quite a novice in the kitchen, however I always make sure that I purchase the Christmas edition as it always has fantastic ideas in it.
To summarise then, this magazine gets the thumbs up for:
* The variety of recipes
* The easy to read format of the magazine
* The occasional freebies
* Interesting articles
* Excellent Christmas / December issue!
The magazine gets the thumbs down for:
* Not enough vegetarian recipes
* Occasionally too many pages of advertisements
* Unlikely the more novice cook would get enough out of it to subscribe to it or purchase every month.
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