Moleskine 13 X 21 cm Wellness Journal, Theme Notebook With Hardcover

Good product to document your personal recipes.

I bought this recipe journal to keep a note of my favourite meals and how to make them. Being generally a fan of Moleskine despite its limitations (see below), decided this was a good option. I like the bright red embossed cover, and this looks to be hard wearing. As a portable journal it looks viable.As a record for recipes the layout is great. It has tabbed sections for each course and a handy guide in the front which covers seasonality of ingredients, calorues, pan and knife types, cooking methods and temperatures, everything you could want. It even has some nice stickers to jazz it up a bit.Where it is sorely lacking, however, is in the quality of paper used. I'm a bit of a pedant when it comes to notebooks, so I like to test with different pen types before I start completing the main pages. This is very much a necessity here, as even for Moleskine these pages are particularly thin. Forget using a fountain pen, or even a fine rollerball here. You will need to either lightly write in ballpoint or in pencil. Your ink will otherwise bleed intollerably through the page, rendering every other page unusable, even in the lighter colours. The picture demonstrates 1) a fine nib fountain pen using green ink - 2) a black ballpoint - 3) a fine black rollerball, at which point I gave up. Definitely test your pens before you start using.In short, a good recipe journal sorely let down by the poor quality writing paper.

Love this little book. Was worried due to reviews of the other Moleskine Wellness planner but this is so much more.There is a page to write your wishes, goals and insperations.There is ample space to write your fitness plan and a review page every 5 weeks - approx 120 pages in total for this section.In the diet section there is a week to view of breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. There is a review page after each week which is a bit weird as it would be better if it was after 5 weeks like in the fitness. (I am personally going to do a 3 week diet plan and rotate the weeks so I dont get bored) appeox 75pages in this section.In the body section there is a soace for medical history. A symptoms log, medical appointments log, body therapy log and vitamins/medication log, followed by blank pages.At the end of the book there is a index page.

Less than impressed. The book slipcase has pictures and description on the back that should be on a peelable label, but isn’t - which spoils the appearance of the case. Worse, the paper is so thin that ink and even pencil shows through to the other side. The introduction pages are full of glib comments about books and reading, along with suggested literary destinations (eg Neverland, urgh) and a list of writers of whom all but two are male, and all are white - I’m not saying I’d rather an artificial gesture towards diversity but the book isn’t helped by these twee, patronising and un-self-conscious witterings. Several blank pages are set aside for ‘favourite book covers’ - are we supposed to sketch our favourite cover images here? Why would I want to...?! Very odd.Apart from these irritations I’ll persevere - on the plus side, there are plenty of pages to fill...

Whilst the concept of this book is great, I was disappointed with the quality of the paper. I eagerly awaited its arrival (which took a while) and was initially very pleased with the look and layout. There are 5 tabbed sections (appetisers, first course, main course, side dishes, and desserts). I would have liked to be able to customise this, adding maybe salads, snacks etc. Whilst I can rename these tabs the are tabbed and therefore I can’t add more sections. My biggest disappointment was the actually paper. I wrote my first recipe in an ink pen and the bleeding of the ink into the underside of the page means that it is unusable. This is disappointing as I would have liked to have written the recipes in proper ink. This mean that you can only use pencils, crayons or ball point pens to write and illustrate your recipes. No markers, brush pens or paints. Whilst this isn’t a complete disaster, I am disappointed and would have expected better quality paper from Moleskin.

The Moleskine - Travel Journal is a beautiful looking notebook; however, I was very disappointed with it, so much so I had to return it and here is why:This book touts itself as a travel journal, it is made by Moleskine, in which I have several of their high-quality notebooks (which I love). The problem I experienced is that it is too thick and bulky to be a travel journal. Even if you took it out of its protective cover, the book is very thick and still heavy. It adds bulk to travel luggage and is not flexible.Add to this the layout is not that great either, and I found it quite annoying. It's like it was created as a quick moneymaker and called a 'travel journal' - It is the opposite. You couldn't take this around with you on your travels, maybe enter your information and remarks when you got back from your holiday and in which you may have forgotten essential facts.Lastly, the paper is cheap; all the quality has gone into the cover - it is all sizzle and no sausage - thin pages that a pen could easily leak through, and impractical for sticking photos or wine labels into it.A poor buy and it feels they have duped the many Moleskine fans there are (including me) by taking advantage of their brand and releasing substandard quality.