Welcome to a new era of Weekend Cooking

Well.....that escalated quickly. Two weeks ago, I was acknowledging BethFishRead's amazing job at hosting Weekend Cooking for so long and now, here I am hosting for the first time. How did that happen?

All jokes aside, I am excited to be the new host of Weekend Cooking starting from this week

I thought today I would share a few thoughts about my experience of participating in Weekend Cooking has been over the last ten years.

My first post to Weekend Cooking was for a very Australian and New Zealand recipe (it's one of those recipes that we squabble over) - Anzac Biscuits. What I learned in that first post, and have been reminded lots  of times over subsequent years is that ingredients that are commonplace in one country is not necessarily commonplace in another. In the comments for that post are questions like what is golden syrup and what is caster sugar? And I can't tell you how many times I have commented on a post from another participant to say I've never even heard of xxxxx before let alone cooked with it!

Over the years I have shared many recipes. Some times I have shared recipes because I have made them just once. Other times they are aspirational in that I want to make them....one day. Some times I share because I think that other people might be interested but there are lots of times when I share a recipe so that I can find it when I want to cook it again so it is really selfish. For example, not too long ago I shared a recipe for Mexican Chicken and Rice that I really only posted because I was fed up of not being able to find the blue envelope that the recipe was written on the back of!

Those of you who were around many years ago would have followed the cooking exploits of my son. He went through a phase in his pre and early teens of being very interested in cooking. Now, we force him to cook one meal a week but other than that he wouldn't really be that keen. The thing is though he can cook for himself if he has to. The tag that I used at the time was Adventures of a Little Chef which is kind of ironic now given that he is 6'10 tall and spent a couple of years at college in America playing basketball!

Looking back you can also see how my interest in the last few years has turned to baking. I have learned that I can make complicated things and that I really enjoy challenging myself, although it never quite looks exactly as good as I want it too. It could also be that I am my own harshest critic though.

Over the years, I have posted all sorts of other things in Weekend Cooking in addition to recipes. There were posts about foodie movies, TV, books, excerpts, music about food, memorable meals, fancy dinners - anything and everything really, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

I had a period where I just wasn't reading much and therefore I wasn't blogging about books much, but I was still always thinking about and posting things for Weekend Cooking. For a little while there Weekend Cooking was the only thing that kept me blogging. It is also probably the topic that I have the most ideas about when it comes to what to post. I actually have around 4 or 5 posts either fully or partially written sitting in draft waiting for their turn to be posted.

Once again, I want to thank BethFishReads for doing such an amazing job with Weekend Cooking over the years. I have very big shoes to fill and I can only hope that I can post things that are half as interesting as her  posts have been over the years. Thank you also for allowing me to take this on. I will do my best to build on what you have built.

So a couple of things

I am based in Australia and so timezone wise I am from the future (compared to most of you anyway)! My aim will be to have my Weekend Cooking post with the Mr Linky scheduled to post on Saturday morning my time, which is Friday evening in the US. However, please don't feel that you have to amend your own posting times as a result. You can link up whenever you post. I will also make every effort to visit everyone.

I am not planning on making any fundamental changes to the way that Weekend Cooking works at this stage. It is still going to continue as a pretty casual place to share your thoughts around food, cooking, food in movies, books or anything else. We might try a couple of new things at some point but not quite yet.

I hope that if you are an existing participant that you continue to enjoy participating each week, and if you are just thinking about participating for the first time then welcome!

I also wanted to say thanks to Melynda from Scratch Made Foods who put together the button below. Thanks Melynda! I am thinking about doing a complete revamp of my blog in due course, but in the mean time, please feel free to grab the button to use on your posts.

And now, let me see if I can remember how to embed Mr Linky.....






Yes I can!! Let me know what  you think of  Mr Linky with the thumbnail. I like the idea of having a picture accompanying the link but I found it a little bit fiddly to add so I'll be interested to hear what you thought.




Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.