Cook The Collection {New Feature}

I’m a cookbook junkie. I love to look through them, I love to get them for gifts, and I can’t pass a thrift store or yard sale without checking out their cookbook selection. I’ve got a bookcase overflowing with books. What I don’t seem to do much of, however, is cook from them. I’m a competent cook and I really enjoy cooking, but I rarely cook from a recipe and when I do I usually turn to either the same few tried and true books or else the Internet.

I’ve got tons of books that I haven’t looked at in years, and another bunch I enjoy looking through but have never cooked from. I’ve got a hoarder mentality though when it comes to cookbooks so I can’t seem to give any away, even as I part easily with other books.

This Cook The Collection feature is born from my desire to get some use out of all these cookbooks, find some new favorites and hopefully break the bonds with some old duds. I’ve counted up and listed out all of the cookbooks, compilations of essays, food science books and foodie memoirs in my collection and the magic number is 152 (I counted anything that contained a recipe). What I propose is to cook one recipe from each book and get through the entire collection. Of course, if I make one recipe a week it’ll take me just under three years, so maybe that’s a bit ambitious!

Here are some ground-rules I’ve established for myself:

1) one blog post per book / recipe. I may prepare a meal using three separate recipes but I will post each one alone.

2) I am not reviewing cookbooks per se. I will blog my impressions of each recipe and book but only as they pertain to me – I’m not going to judge whether others will or won’t like the cookbook or recipe.

3) I might modify the recipes to reflect my own cooking style, ingredients on hand, and family tastes. I’m not using these recipes as cooking lessons but as guides to prepare a certain dish. I also will not be publishing the recipes in each post in order to protect the authors copyrights- I’ll talk about the dish and include my own photographs but the reader will have to seek out the cookbook on their own in order to try out the recipe.

4)  Any new books that come into my collection will be added to the project total.

5) The link to each cookbook leads to Amazon, where I have an affiliate agreement. If a reader does decide to purchase the cookbook via the link, this site will receive a modest commission from the sale.

What do you think of this idea? I’d love to hear your comments! Also, what is the one cookbook you can’t live without?