This weekend I issued Mike an exasperated challenge: Let’s make one recipe from each of our cookbooks before June’s end. We have 29 cookbooks in the house, not counting stacks of foodie magazines. Compared to other personal libraries an inventory of 29 might not be so expansive. But in reality only 5 are in regular rotation. The others sit in the back room gathering dust, taking up space, and generally irritating me.

“Mike,” I’ll say in the midst of a cleaning attack, “don’t you think we toss this [book with a ridiculously obscure cooking focus] into the GoodWill pile? We’ve had it for like, 4 years.”

“What? That? No. We haven’t even used that yet. There’s good stuff in there,” he’ll answer.

You can see how this quickly goes nowhere.

While Mike may be reluctant to let go of unexplored recipes, he is always up for is a food challenge.  I threw down the gauntlet. He quickly accepted.

So here we are, facing down the month. 29 cookbooks… 29 different recipes. We’ll post all of our efforts here. Even if they turn out to be epic food fails.

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