A quiche recipe I’ll be sharing with you soon. With proper accreditation of course.

One thing that I’m not very good at when it comes to blogging is doing follow-up posts. I’ll ask for help, and then never tell you what changes I made because of your input! I’m going to try to change that, and I’m going to start with some tips on what to do when you want to post a recipe on your blog, tips cultivated from the feedback you gave me!

First, I think it’s important to define why it’s important to source properly. Not only is it the legal thing to do, it’s the right thing to do. Imagine you put hours and hours into… photographing a wedding. And someone liked the pictures so much that they posted the entire wedding set on their blog, and mentioned in passing that you took them (or didn’t mention you at all). What they should have done was picked a favorite photo, talked about what they liked about it, and sent their readers to your blog to see the full set. Or they should have emailed you to ask if they could feature your photos and had explicit permission. Makes sense right? Same thing with recipes. That is the reason why we should all be thinking about this, because not sourcing or getting proper permission is stealing from the original author.

I think the most important thing to remember when trying to work out the multitude of questions that can arise when thinking about this issue, is what a person can “own”.

I own the pictures I take.

No one ever owns a list of ingredients.

I own the recipe directions as written out in my own words.

You have the same right as well. So if you invent a portobello mushroom pie, take a picture of it, and post it on your blog, the written out directions and the picture of said pie belong to you. They are your creation, and no one should be using them without giving proper credit or your permission.

So is it okay to take a recipe from my blog, copy and paste the ingredients and directions on your own, take your own picture and put that up on your blog? No. You need to rewrite the directions in your own words. And you definitely should be sourcing me as your inspiration with a link back to That Wife.

There is definitely a gray area in all of this though. For instance, I pinned this Butternut Squash and Swiss Chard White Lasagna from Coconut & Lime. Looks delicious doesn’t it?

Legally I can take the list of ingredients, paste it into a post, write out the instructions in my own words, and include my own picture. Personally though, I think that doesn’t give Coconut & Lime the credit she deserves for a really fabulous (looking) entree. So I’m instituting some new guidelines for myself:

If I invent something or use a family recipe, I’ll post it right here. It might be based loosely on something I’ve seen in the past, but as long as I didn’t make it with a cookbook sitting in front of me, I’m calling it my own.

If I use a recipe elsewhere on the internet as-is I will use my own picture as a teaser, and I will write notes with any minor change I’ve made, but I won’t post the recipe here. I think the person who originally developed the recipe deserves the credit.

If I use a recipe elsewhere on the internet and make really significant changes (using a different type and amount of flour, using a completely different cooking technique, etc), I will write out the recipe here, along with my notes because if I make big changes you want to be able to follow them in order to duplicate it. I think this is an area that gets abused in the food blogging world. Swapping out dark chocolate chips for milk chocolate in a cake recipe does NOT constitute significant changes. I will of course always link to the page that inspired my adapted recipe.

If I use a recipe found in a cookbook, I will get permission from the cookbook author to post it, and if that isn’t available I will simply tell you how much I loved it and hope you check it out from the library or buy a copy of your own!

If you post recipes on your blog I encourage you to think about sourcing properly and making sure that blog traffic/hits go to the rightful owner. Sites like Martha Stewart, Pioneer Woman, Smitten Kitchen and others rely on advertising and hits to make money, and when you keep the traffic on your own blog instead of sending people to see them you are stealing a little bit of the money the deserve. Show them how much you appreciate having them as a resource!

Oh, and one more note that I almost forgot. Let’s say you are browsing Amy’s blog and you fall in love with the cupcakes that have Oreos in them. If you look closely at her post though, you see that the recipe originally came from Beantown Baker.  Who deserves the credit and the hits when you send people over to figure out how to make them? In my opinion Beantown Baker does, unless you follow Amy’s recipe word-for-word. If you are posting an adapted recipe I think it is only fair to say you found the recipe through Amy, but the original author was Beantown Baker.

I do have one more question. I have a cookbook from around 1913 that belonged to my great-great-grandfather. Is it old enough that I can freely post recipes without the need to get permission from someone? Same question for out of print books, if readers are unable to find the recipe elsewhere, can I be the source?

A few links based on the excellent feedback you gave me:

If you are puzzling through this same thing, I highly encourage you to read through the comments on my original post on this topic.

Echo Day pointed me to this post with a quick list of dos and donts when it comes to posting recipes.

MrsW suggested we check the copyrights of each cookbook to determine whether we can post an individual recipe. Genius!

Erin found a link on Smitten Kitchen’s FAQ page that can help us puzzle through this.

If you’re really stressed about these issues like I was, read this post Amy linked to called Recipe Attribution by David Lebovitz.

 

Today’s post was supposed to be pictures from yesterday, which we declared “T1 Day” and included a family trip to the park, present opening, and a baby covered in whipped cream, but I woke up this morning to find that my D drive (the drive where all of my pictures are stored) has disappeared! I’m going to have to wait until TH gets home late tonight to figure out what happened.*

I despise this picture, as borsch photographed late at night with one on-camera flash just doesn’t work, but if you’ve been wanting to make authentic Polish borsch I happen to have a Krakow cookbook gifted to me by TH’s family, and so I have a recipe for you. I felt like it was a lot of work, and I didn’t end up liking it, but I don’t like beets so the odds I would like it was really slim from the get-go.

I’ve transcribed the recipe below as-is in my cookbook. I didn’t make ravioli as it was described as “a very time-consuming activity which sometimes takes several hours”, so we added hard boiled eggs to our borsch.

Red Borsch (Beetroot Soup)

from The best of Polish cuisine in Krakow

Ingredients
Over 1.5 lb meat on the bone (beef, veal, or chicken)
Soup vegetables (2 carrots, 1 parsnip, piece of celeriac, 1 small leek)
4 pt water
1 lb small beetroots
1 tbsp apple vinegar or 1/2 teaspoonful citric acid
2 tbsp marjoram
2 tbsp sugar
Several garlic cloves
Salt
Black Pepper
Optional: 2/3 cup thick sour cream if you’d like to make white borsch

1. Wash and scrub the beetroots well using a brush, put them in boiling water, cook (for about 40 minutes), drain off, and cool.
2. Peel the cool beetroots and grate with a vegetable grater.
3. Put the rinsed meat in a large pot of water and bring to the boil over a high high. Then reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer.
4. When the meat is almost tender add the peeled and rinsed vegetables and the cloves of garlic and cook everything until tender.
5. Remove the cooked meat and vegetables from the stock and add the grated beetroots, citric acid (or vinegar), sugar, salt and pepper and for for several minutes over a low heat.
6. Strain the borsch using a colander and season with marjoram.

This is a clear soup served with ravioli, but it can also be thickened with cream and then served with boiled potatoes (separately cooked), kidney beans or quartered, hard-boiled eggs.

 

*If any of my clients are reading DO NOT WORRY! My files back up every night and are stored offsite, so they do exist, I just don’t have the technical know-how to access them .:)

These turnips came in my CSA box, and I had no idea what to do with them. Of course I turned to How To Cook Everything, my favorite cookbook ever.

This dish helped me work toward two of my 101 in 1001 goals! I have never had turnips before (or I don’t remember having them) and it was a recipe out of one of my cookbooks. Why did I wait so long to eat turnips? I really like them! They are so pretty too.

Braised Turnips with Mustard Sauce

adapted from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 lb turnips, cut into slices (I like slices better than cubes)
salt and pepper
3/4 cup vegetable stock
1 Tbsp whole grain mustard

Heat olive oil over medium heat in a medium skillet. Add turnips, sprinkle with salt and pepper, stirring frequently to let all sides brown. Pour in veggie stock, cover, reduce heat to low, and let simmer for 10-15 min, or until turnips are tender (I like mine very tender so I do closer to 20-25 minutes). Add mustard about halfway through, taste and add more to taste, as that’s why I always do. Serve warm.

If you want to make this really delicious, replace part of the vegetable stock with cream. I did that once, and it was delicious.

How do you eat turnips?

That Husband doesn’t like receiving material things, so I decided to gift him a weekend of meals as gourmet as I could possibly make them. As you’ll see, it was a very indulgent weekend for both of us! I highly recommend everything I made, as the dishes weren’t that difficult, and tasted scrumptious.

I won’t be reposting recipes that I’ve linked to here, but a few of them were out of some cookbooks I own and I”ll write those recipes up and respost them here so you can give them a try!

Birthday breakfast was a Country Frittata With Potatoes, Pancetta & Basil. I was worried that the bottom was overcooked but it tasted wonderful, and the top (as you’ll see below) was golden and cheesy. I pushed the sides over to let the uncooked egg run to the bottom several more times than the recipe reccomended because TH is really sensitive to raw egg.

Served on the red “You Are Special” plate of course. Did your family have one of these growing up?

I meant to make lunch, but we were so stuffed from our late breakfast that we skipped lunch and just had dinner instead. I went all fancy and laid a tablecloth on the table (from Goodwill for $1!)

I found stemmed glasses at TJMaxx for $1.99 each and picked up some Mormon bubbly. The salt and pepper shakers are special because they’re the first gift that TH ever gave me, for my 22nd birthday, right before we started dating. He bought them with a friend and they each gave me one as a late birthday gift, and after we started dating he admitted that he gave me the one with the heart on the chest on purpose.

Pear and Spinach Salad with Homemade Poppyseed Dressing from my Hometown Favorites cookbook (it’s really a cookbook from my hometown!)

Mushroom Rice Pilaf, recipe from the Williams & Sonoma Bride and Groom Cookbook.

I made the rice in the rice cooker instead of simmering for the recommended 30 minutes. Very quick and easy!

Roast Chicken with Lemon and Herbs, recipe from the Williams & Sonoma Bride and Groom Cookbook.

I meant to make this for lunch on Saturday, but we had it for lunch after church on Sunday instead. Both the pizza and the fries were like a garlic bomb. I LOVED IT.

Garlic Glazed Chicken Pizza with homemade pizza crust. I made the pizza crust using our bread maker, and decided to make one pie with the amount of dough instead of two like the bread maker recipe booklet suggested. This ended up being a great choice because the crust was able to soak up the extra juices from the chicken glaze. The chicken came from the leftover we had from the roast chicken I made the night before. Don’t skip out on the Gruyere cheese, it’s a must-have!

Garlicky Baked Fries. I walked away from this meal stuffed because I could not stop eating these fries.

And the birthday dessert (because their has to be a birthday dessert, even if I forgot to buy candles)…

Molten Chocolate Cake

This is crazy easy people. CRAZY. I halved the recipe substituted strawberries for raspberries when I made the coulis (the strawberries were on sale). And then I put the coulis on the ice cream instead of the cake because I couldn’t bear to dilute the intensity of the molteness with fruit.

See that liquid center? Oh baby.

Really Good Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with Strawberry Coulis drizzled on top.

I used two vanilla beans instead of one. This was a good idea.

One tip: The only way I was able to manage all of this (because it was a lot of work!) was to do all of my prep work the night before. I chopped all the vegetables up and put them in baggies (the fridge has smelled like garlic for days), made the ice cream base, lightly cooked the pizza cruse and wrapped it up tight in saran wrap, seasoned the chicken, and grated all of the cheeses. And then I plugged in my BodyBugg and learned that being on your feet and cooking that long actually burns a lot of calories! Of course I ate them all back, and more, over the next two days.

I realize that most people show their crafty projects after the intended recipients have received them, but does it make any sense for me to show you a valentine craft project 364 days before valentines day 2010? I think not.

After these Fred Flare valentine hot chocolate packets were featured on Weddingbee, I remembered that one of the cookbooks I received for Christmas had a recipe for homemade marshmallows that all of the women back home were raving about. I wasn’t going to pay the insanely high price of $8 for a packet of cocoa, so I decided to come up with my own version. I don’t usually do step-by-step photos, because the lighting in my apartment is so awful, but with a project like this I thought you all might like to see how to make your own.

Ingredients

Vegetable oil for brushing
4 pkgs unflavored gelatin
3 1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup confectioners sugar

Brush your jelly roll pan with vegetable oil. Cut a piece of wax paper and lay it on top of the oiled pan, and brush more vegetable oil on top. Set aside.

Pour 3/4 cup cold water in the bowl of an electric mixer and sprinkle gelatin on top. Let sit for at least 5 minutes.

Place 3 cups granulated sugar, corn syrup, salt, and 3/4 cup water in a medium saucepan. Take a moment to soak in exactly how much sugar marshmallows really contain.

Set saucepan over high heat and bring to boil.

Insert a candy thermometer, and cook until mixture reaches soft-ball stage (238 degrees F), which will be after about 9 minutes of boiling.

Using the whisk attachment beat hot syrup into gelatin on a low speed.

Gradually increase speed to high, beat until mixture is very stiff, somewhere around 12 minutes. Ooooh and aaaah as it turns white like magic. Beat in vanilla.

What does very stiff mean exactly? I have no idea. I guessed it meant something like this.

Pour mixture into the jelly roll pan and let sit for 3 hours, or overnight. The picture below is of the marshmallows after sitting overnight.

Place 1 cup confectioners sugar in a fine strainer and sift onto a clean work surface. Invert large mashmallow onto the sugar-coated surface, and peel off the wax paper.

Take your heart shaped cookie cutter and dip it in vegetable oil.

Press down firmly, twisting a little at the bottom, to make sure you cut all the way through the ‘mallow.

Roll the marshmallow in the excess confectioners sugar.

Have a little fun playing with the leftover cutouts (please note, this step is unnecessary).

Call your husband in and while pointing to your hearts say “Look how pretty!” (This step is necessary).

Line up your hearts in neat little rows. Continue with the “Look how pretty!” statements.

Fill plastic baggies, one with hot cocoa mix, the other with marshmallows. Use your (new!) rotary paper cutter to cut out strips of red paper. Fold in half, and use hot glue gun to affix “i love you” ribbon to the front. Staple label to the top of the baggie.

If you are really crafty, you will make sure the personal instructions look at pretty as the rest of your packaging. If you are me, you break out the ball point pen and scrawl across the back of the labels with your unsightly handwriting.

Don’t the hearts look so cute all smooshed together like this?

I couldn’t resist doing a little test run for myself. Isn’t that one of the sweetest sights you have sever seen?

Actually, 3 marshmallow hearts floating together in my hot cocoa cup might be the sweetest sight.

No! No! No! The absolute sweetest is 5 marshmallow hearts, oooey and gooey and a little bit melty, floating together in my hot cocoa cup.

I’m so happy how this turned out, it’s definitely the cutest thing I’ve ever made. I’m going to keep the recipients of these valentines a secret so they can be surprised when they receive them.

What are you crafting for Valentines Day?