Commitment to Recipe-Making

I decided today that I am going to make it a goal of mine to cook or bake at least one recipe from one of my many cookbooks every week.  I have a tendency to amass cookbooks and then never make anything from them or I will find one recipe I like and then make that recipe...and only that recipe...again and again.

The idea to do this came to me this morning when I was reflecting on the really delicious food I've eaten in the past two days and realized that all of the food came from recipes I had followed!  Normally I'll just throw "healthy" stuff together with some nuts (okay, I realize nuts are healthy and that could be considered some of the healthy "stuff" to which I'm referring but I'll distinguish) and some sauce/dressing I have on hand along with some spices and call it a day.

Too often, though, I fall into a rut with this formula and don't branch out OR I DO branch out and end up with something that is, well, not good and then I get discouraged from experimenting again.

Two days ago I made those HEAVENLY turtles using a recipe I found on a blog and then yesterday I filled a raw chocolate tart shell with the leftover caramel sauce from the turtles and made a caramel cream chocolate pie...also from Rachel's blog.

So follows the journey of the ENTIRE pie into my belly.

...all while playing Holiday Scrabble with my mama...

THEN! Last night for dinner I made a recipe from the Veganomicon, following it to the T.  It turned out AWESOME!!!!  The Veganomicon is one cookbook to which I refer for consistently the same recipes, but I thought, All of these recipes are amazing so likely other recipes are amazing.

And the recipe I made last night was.

I made this salad with roasted fennel, hazelnuts and dried cranberries over chicory (okay, Whole Foods did not have chicory so I used spinach but every other part of the recipe I followed to a T) with a roasted shallot vinaigrette.  Holy wow was it good.

I am looking forward to making another dish this week, given the great success I've been having, not to mention, enjoyment I've been getting from both using my cookbooks and eating the creations!  The cookbook I think I'm going to use this week is my The Inspired Vegan cookbook, by Bryant Terry.  I bought it awhile ago and have literally only made one thing from it--"Wilted Dandelion Greens with Hot Garlic Dressing and Garlic Chips"--and it was phenomenal.  Many other recipes look phenomenal too so I'm gonna give 'em a chance :)