New Project

Recently, a younger cousin of mine excitedely mentioned that she had purchased the new Top Chef cook book and was discovering some great new dishes. I was inspired by her enthusiasm and thought I might buy it and cook as many of the recipes as I could. However, a couple of weeks before I bought the 25th Anniversary edition of the The Silver Palate and instead of splurging on yet another cook book I thought I might as well make as many of these recipes as I could and then move to another.

To make the cooking more interesting and to give me something fun to blog about I have designed a little challenge for myself. The blog-o-sphere is full of accounts of people making every recipe out of this or that great cook book. I know that I am not disciplined enough to actually make every recipe in any cook book so I thought I could try a scaled down version. To keep myself focused and manage my expectations, I intend to meet the following goals:

• I will make 12 recipes out of the cook book that I can serve as a main dish. Desserts and side dishes are just a bonus.
• I will make and blog about the recipes by September 30, 2008. I am writer and work well under a deadline.
• I will remake 5 of the dishes and serve them to guests by December 15, 2008. The Silver Palate ladies encourage their readers to make entertaining a habit. We often get in a rut of just going out with friends or spending our weekends holed away in the house. This part of my challenge will hopefully form some new healthy routines without exhausting us too much.

Now, this is the part where I cheat a little. I have already made three of these recipes and have served one to guests. I will blog about those in the next entries. So this officially starts my mid-year challenge.