When Little D was born I decided to make him a very special gift.  

As you may have guessed food is very close to my heart and I love cookery books and read them like novels. Therefore it won't be any real surprise to learn the gift was a recipe book, but one penned by myself and including all our family favourities.  Everything will be in there, from my special Spanish rice to great grandma's treacle toffee, interdispersed with stories and snippets of the family history.

It is still very much a work in progress and I have gone from planning a proper published glossy tome to wanting to produce something handwritten and heartfelt.  I may yet do both, but recently I have been looking for off the peg solutions for my research.  You would think that this would be easy.  What's difficult in finding a plain A5 notebook? But to be honest it's been difficult finding one up to the job.  I was looking for something good quality that could stand up to the odd spill, without lines so I could add little diagrams and pictures and things, and last but not least it must have a way of indexing entries.

Quite out of the blue I was very lucky to be given a lovely Moleskine Recipe book that was just the ticket from a lovely friend this Christmas.  It has sections for starters, mains and desserts and a section just for wine.  It is going to be perfect for my research and recipe development.  It also has a handy little pocket for cut outs.

       

Another option I happened on by chance  is Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks. I was sent an unlined A5 book to try and was really impressed by it.  Again they have that handy pocket and a really useful section at the front of indexing.  The paper is really good quality and a delight to write upon.  Because it is plain it is perfect for including diagrams or pictures of items I have made.

              

I am really looking forward to using my new notebooks now that the kitchen project is almost complete. I just need to find the perfect kitchen table....

We were given Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks free of charge to review.