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.