Cookbook Project - Full Disclosure, and Aftermath

It's a new year, and time to finally wrap up this project before I can start my next one. Having gone through all of my cookbooks, I've been kind of curious to look back and see for myself exactly what I made, and how successful overall the challenge was.

But first, I do have one thing to admit.

I still have one book I haven't used.

Two years ago, tpau gave me a book called "The Gingerbread Architect" as a holiday gift. I had planned on using it over this holiday as a finale to the project... until I actually looked at it. This book is crazy out of my league - the houses are gorgeous, but I don't have the skills or the equipment. The blueprints are semi-comprehensible to non-architect me, I don't know how to work with fondant, I don't have a set of pastry tips, and I don't have a free week (the minimum recommended time to complete their recipes).

So. I *will* finish this. Over the next year, I promise I will develop the necessary skills and supplies, and I will make one of these houses. Just... not this week.

That said, here's what I did over a year and a half:

( Hidden, because it'll be a lot of rather dull info. But feel free to peek, if you're curious... )

Okay - that's about halfway through, and I think I'm going to pause there, since this is turning out to be fairly long (also, since I found a numbering error in the original writeups that's taking a little time to fix as I go). It's interesting, though, to look back and see how many new things I tried and learned through the course of this project....

Cookbook Project - Aftermath, Part 2

( Herein lies the second half of the catalog of What I Cooked In The Course Of This.... )

So. There you have it. 188 cookbooks, 66 of which I bought myself, and more than that many recipes, only six of which were not-good or worse. All things are considered, that's a much better percentage than I had anticipated when I started this project....