Friday, August 3, 2007

Welcome to my new food blog

If you came here from Icelandic cooking, recipes and food culture you will already know what this is about. If not, here’s the deal:

I recently made an inventory of my books and realised I had many cookbooks I had never tried as much as a single recipe from, although I have read most of the shorter ones and looked at the pictures in the longer ones. While doing so I have often thought I should try this or that recipe, but rarely acted on it. I then got to thinking about my cooking habits and realised that in the last five years or so I have only tried maybe half a dozen new recipes a year, most of them found on the web. Before that, I used to try a couple of new recipes every month, many of them from cookbooks or my grandmother’s collection of newspaper recipe clippings. While I do think it’s okay to collect recipe books one never uses for anything other than reading or looking at the photos, I still feel a little guilty for having them, because I originally bought them or was given them with the intent that they should be used. Therefore I am starting a challenge for myself that will not only justify my owning all these recipe books, but also get me into the kitchen to make something new every week.

I set myself these simple rules:
• To try at least one new recipe every week until I have tested at least one recipe from each of my recipe and cookery books. Weeks when I'm away on holiday or because of work are excepted.
• The recipe must come from a different recipe book each week, but additional recipes can be from books I have used before.
• I will publish the results in this blog, complete with recipes, notes and reviews.

Additionally, I will write about other food-related subjects that don’t fit in with the theme of Icelandic cooking, and I will also delve into my collection of recipe brochures, newspaper clippings and thousands of recipes I have saved on my computer. It is about time I got them organised anyway.

I will not start the challenge until after the weekend, as I will be away from home until Monday and need some time to organise myself and choose the first few recipes, but I will post my cookbook list sometime during the weekend.

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