Keeping a Tasting Journal is an at home activity that you can do to familiarise yourself with your personal taste preferences. It is extremely important for you to have the ability to identify different foods, flavors, and smells. A Tasting Journal then allows you to create a trackable repeatable pattern that you can use to identify the foods that work well for you during chemo and which ones do not.
Practice on Your Tasting Journal Pages
Taste, Describe, and Investigate Various Food Preferences and Flavors
Directions: Attached to this article are Printable Tasting Journal Pages. You are to fill out these tasting journal pages with every meal that you cook or eat. These tasting journal pages form the basis of your taste test. The purpose is to get you in the habit of dissecting, and understanding the flavors inside of different foods.
Pick up a copy of Chef Ryan Callahan’s Tasting Journal.
By keeping a log of what your loved one eats and what their preferences are you will be able to identify trends in food and flavors more easily. Share this information with your dietitian to develop a more effective dietary plan for you.
First, read though Roundness of Flavor. Understanding the basics of Cooking for Chemo will help you learn to adjust your cooking more effectively and quickly.
Tasting Journal Directions
This is how you use the Tasting Journal Pages.
Recipe Name
Use this area to document the name of your recipe or meal.
Date and Time Eaten
Use this area to document the time and date that you ate this meal.
Recipe Source
Ever forget where you found a recipe? Filling out this section will help you keep track of your favorite recipes.
Rating
Love a recipe? Hate a recipe? Make some notes to remind yourself.
Ingredients and Seasonings
Documenting the ingredients and seasonings used in a recipe will help you understand what foods are common to certain flavors.
Describe the Taste
Describing the taste will get you into the habit understanding the roots of common recipes.
What did you Like?
Put what you loved about a recipe here. Ingredients? Seasonings? Flavor? Texture? Color? Smell?
What did you NOT Like?
Put what you disliked about a recipe here. Ingredients? Seasonings? Flavor? Texture? Color? Smell?
What can you add or subtract?
Learning to cook like a great chef involves some thinking about the ingredients and seasonings inside of a dish. This section is to help you identify ingredients that would benefit a dish and serve as a reminder to add more or subtract certain items to improve the dish next time you cook it.
Describe the Texture
Textures are a key component to the eating experience. Different textures cause different emotional responses. How do different textures make you feel?
Describe the Smell
Tell yourself about the smell of a dish. Did you love it? Did you hate it? Identify the smell and document that experience here.
Additional Tasting Notes
This section is a free-for-all. Write down any other information that is important to you. Was it raining when you ate that bagel? Was it sunny outside? Were the eggs well-done instead of runny? Come up with some fun and helpful notes.