I have been thinking of doing a ‘cook-through’ of one of my cookbooks. Have you done this or been thinking of this challenge for yourself?
Recently I read some posts from a girl who is completing a challenge with a friend by cooking-through a popular cookbook. It really sounds like a lot of fun but due to my personal circumstances it is a difficult thing for me to do with a friend. So I was thinking of a virtual cooking-through challenge which I could do with friends from around the globe through my blog. Many cookbook clubs or ‘cooking-through’ challenges rely on everyone cooking from the same book. I have a bit of a twist in mind for this one.
I think that many of us have treasured cookbooks in our kitchens with so many wonderful recipes and we want to make everything in that one particular book. It may be one handed through many generations of your family; given to you as a wedding or housewarming gift; a spur-of-the-moment purchase/gift for yourself of a cookbook from one of your favorite famous chefs; a cookbook which is geared towards including children and all family members to work together in the kitchen or maybe you want to immerse yourself into a new cuisine which has been tempting your taste buds of late. Whatever the book, I believe that many home cooks have at least one which they treasure the most. I have several in my vintage collection, including some previously owned by my family members who have passed on, which are always luring my eyes to their pages and wonderful old-fashioned simple, yet delicious, recipes. My biggest issue at times is which book I would start with for a ‘cooking-through’ challenge! 🙂
Here are my ideas on this challenge which anyone can participate in.
First and foremost in this challenge – YOU choose the cook book which you would like to cook-through. You don’t need to purchase a particular book (unless you want to) for my challenge. I have faith that many of you who enjoy cooking may already own a book which is the first one you thought of when reading this post. I want this to be a supportive atmosphere where we all can cook-through the book we want to (no matter the age of the printing of it or author or type of food) and yet share our experiences online via our blogs. I know that sometimes just a little bit of encouragement and support from others is all we need to undertake and complete a challenge in our life (even if it may seem like a minor challenge to others).
On the first day of each month, for 12 months (hopefully beginning May 1, 2017), I will provide a blog post which gives a recipe category for that month. I then challenge each of the participants who are following along to look through their book for recipes which could be included in that particular category and choose the ones to make in their own kitchen as time in their life will allow (because lets face it – we all have lives to live outside of the kitchen and away from our blogs; but we still must eat!). You can make as many as you want to or are able to. As you make those recipes you can blog about them on your site (photos optional but encouraged) and place a comment (with your post’s link) on, or ping back to, my monthly post on that category so others can find your posts. If for any reason you and your family do not eat those types of foods you may also blog about the reasons why you do not partake. There again, that is optional.
We can all support each other and give tips on recipes via blog posts and comments and discover new recipes to add to our collections.
As for the definition of ‘cooking-through’; I let that up to you! Each of us gets to define that for ourselves. You may want to cook every single recipe between the covers while someone else will want to only cook a percentage of the recipes included in their book. Or maybe you only want to cook some more recipes from a particular book with no thought to setting a goal for the amount that you will make out of that book.
You may decide to set some personal challenges for yourself. Maybe involve the kids or just do this with your spouse or a friend. You may want to follow the recipes exactly as written with no deviations or you may take some liberties in spices or alternative ingredients to fit into your dietary restrictions or possible food allergies.
Maybe you even want to challenge yourself to cook-through two books at once!
I let those things up to you because this should be a fun challenge for us all.
The only thing which unites us all for this challenge is that we will be cooking from the same recipe category in a particular month.
If you think you would be interested in doing this challenge please leave a comment below; or better yet, create a blog post which introduces the book you have chosen with a link to this blog post on my site.
No matter what you decide, happy cooking/baking in your little kitchen!!
