Perhaps this blog should start with a little back story. To begin, this is a first time for me in a number of ways.
First, I am newly a vegetarian. This is for a number of reasons that I will probably end up going into as the blog continues, but to start with I can say that I was put on this path after I read Michael Pollan's phenomenal, and well known, book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and his follow-up, "In Defense of Food". This got me interested in eating a healthy, more local diet.
Which brings me to my second first (if that makes sense grammatically)- I am currently in the process of joining a CSA. For those of you not familiar with a CSA, it is a group of lucky people who get great, tasty, fresh vegetables straight from the farmers in exchange for simply providing financial support to help them begin their planting season. I think its a brilliant system that is win-win for everyone involved! I get organic, local produce and I get to look my farmer in the eye when he makes his delivery, and Neil Taylor of TaylOrganic Farms in Atlanta gets guaranteed customers and meets me and the other wonderful people at Shearith Israel who will be CSA members. I'm lucky to be involved.
Ok. I've clearly drifted off topic a bit. Bear with me. My third first is the purchase of a cookbook, a real honest-to-goodness tome of a book. I had never really owned one before, and mostly just found recipes like everyone else in the information age: I searched the 'net. I decided that between my new diet and my new source of interesting and unusual veggies, it might be worth my effort to have a real good resource for how to work with my ingredients and what flavor combinations are natural. I heard some good things about Mark Bittman's book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and did a little searching. It seemed like a lot of bang for my buck and I ordered it from Amazon. It arriveda few weeks ago and - WOW!- it is huge: weighing in at 4.2 pounds and 1008 pages! A true tome, how many of you can say you own one?! I started reading it like any other book, from cover to cover. Let me tell you, this is quite a task because the book is chock full of information- especially references to other pages with yet other recipes...the thing is so cross referenced it really resembles a food encyclopedia more than a cookbook.
This brings me to the point of the whole story, and congrats for any of you who have actually read it this far. I have decided that I am going to challenge myself to make every (EVERY!) recipe in this book, cover to cover. That totals out to over 2,000 recipes (according to the publishers) and probably closer to a billion (according to my conservative estimate). I know it won't be a simple challenge, but I think I'm up for it!
Now, these are not fancy, French-Chef style recipes and I'm certainly no fancy, French-Chef style cook. I like food to taste good and I like interesting combinations, but they may not always be beautifully plated (I'm a simple man and I'll eat great food whether its on a plate from IKEA or some fancy china from...China). I will, however, take pictures of my creations and submit them for your approval.
I've always enjoyed cooking, and especially enjoyed trying new foods and making new recipes- so all of this is going to be a great adventure! Follow along! If you can handle it...
