About This Blog

The Challenge:  Work through all the recipes in my cookbooks and overstuffed recipe box.

The Deadline:   None!  

We all have piles of unused things.  So do I.  My special stack lives in the kitchen.  I am the owner of more cookbooks and recipes than I could likely count.  I often contemplate my index-card sized recipe box (which will no longer close) and reflect on the small percentage of its contents that have actually been prepared and eaten.  I gaze at my shelf full of barely used cookbooks and wonder why I head for the internet anytime I need a recipe that uses, say, asparagus.

My hoard comes from a variety of sources.  There are recipes that have been long enjoyed in my family, books given to me by friends, fliers picked up in the store with instructions to prepare some exotic item.  Still others have drifted into my home from origins unknown.  In my kitchen, there is a wealth of food wisdom left thus far untapped.

I now want to change that.  And so this project is born.  I am going to work through every cookbook in my kitchen, prepare every recipe spilling out of the box.   My plan is to do the unthinkable in our modern culture and use what I already have.  The project is to pull these forgotten recipes from obscurity and place them on the kitchen counter, so that they may acquire the mantle of food spills and water stains that come from use. 

For the sake of full disclosure, I will tell you that I may skip some.  While my personal challenge is to try all – or almost all – of the recipes in my cupboard, I will take the liberty to postpone or exclude at my discretion.  (If I were Julie Powell, for example, I would have skipped the aspics.)

Whenever possible, I will reprint the recipes.  If I can’t, I’ll reference their sources.

This blog combines two of my loves:  cooking and writing.  To be more exact, it will be about cooking and exploring the deeper meanings found in everyday things, then sharing them through this blog.  Some of our most important – dare I say holy – moments arrive through common activities in which we find that we have seen God, been confronted with our own humanity, or are drawn into closer fellowship with the people who share our planet.

Being a pastor, and one who often reflects on the deeper meanings and hidden significance of things, I thought this would be a perfect project.  Food not only makes me eat, it makes me think.  It leads me to reflect on who we are and what happens when we prepare things to put into our mouths.  It reminds me that we do not live by bread alone, but more often we feast on all that is good in our world.

May you, in reading this blog, get hungry.  If not hungry for the meal of the day, then ravenous for life and to live it more fully.  Most of all, may you come to know the Source of our sustenance and the Giver of all good things.

Enjoy the feast!