The First Recipe

Last night, I started another item on my list (my birthday list, in case you don't know). #9 on my list of Birthday Goals is to cook thru an entire cookbook. When I made this goal, I knew exactly which cookbook I would use. Its called Comfort Food - I received it last year and have used it once or twice. It is a great cookbook with some really good recipes in it. It also has a lot of variety and it isn't huge (both of which are important for cooking all the recipes in one year!). I sat down this week to figure out exactly how many recipes there were and how often I would have to cook to get thru it. There are a total of 67 recipes...not too bad. Of course, with any cookbook and my individual tastes, there are bound to be a few recipes that I just don't like - at all! I'm sure they are great recipes and other people would probably love them, but I just can't do it. I also think I should be entitled to a few "skips" if I'm cooking thru an entire cookbook. So, I settled on the arbitrary number of 5...I am authorized to skip a total of 5 recipes in the book. That leaves me with 62 recipes in 1 year...I'm going to be busy.

The recipe I started with was chosen mostly because I already had the ingredients. I didn't want to make any special trips to the grocery store last night, so I started out with Salisbury Steak.

I've never made salisbury steak before but it turned out ok. I followed the recipe exactly, even though it was a little different than the few times I've eaten salisbury steak. Bill really seemed to enjoy it and said he is looking forward to the coming year and all the tasty meals. I asked him to describe the first recipe in this venture to cook thru the cookbook and he said: "Success". So, I guess that's it...1 down, 61 to go.

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