Julie, Julia, and Me

On January 1st, I issued myself a challenge Julie and Julia style. But rather than cooking my way through the great Joy of Cooking one day at a time, I plan to cook at least one new recipe a week from my recipe collection. I will do this for 52 weeks. That's right, this is Julie and Julia, the slacker edition.

I am doing this because I recently realized that what I believed to be an interest in cooking is, in fact, a recipe-collecting addiction. The fact that I work in a library makes this problem all the greater. As a library employee, many a cookbook crosses my desk. And, I assure you, not one cookbook has passed my desk that did not contain at least one, often many, many more than one, recipe that I deemed worthy of photocopying. Herein lies the problem. In addition to the dozens of cookbooks I had to buy because I could not photocopy all the good recipes they contained, (I only get 5 free photocopies a day at the library), I have stacks and stacks of photocopied recipes. And stacks of recipes I ripped out of magazines. And stacks of recipes given to me by friends. Okay, you get the picture. So - in an ongoing effort to rid my house of clutter (HA HA), I decided to weed out my recipe collection. But how? By actually cooking some of the recipes I have been hording and determine whether or not a recipe is worthy of saving. I know that 52 recipes won't make much of a dent in my pile, but at least I will feel better about the pile. This may not sound like much of a challenge to you. After all, Julie Powell conquered the great art of french cooking. But trust me, for a a stay at home mom of three, with two part-time jobs, just feeding my family is an accomplishment. Frankly, I have already found myself wanting to throw in the towel. Instead, I have decided to journal my experience and make myself accountable. I plan to include recipes and pictures so that you can follow along at home.

Let the cooking begin!