The project begins.

So, I'm not going to lie. J and I went to see the movie Julie & Julia last evening and this is one of many derivative blogs that are going to try -- and fail -- to duplicate the magic. With that said, it's still good incentive to work one's way through an entire cookbook -- something I've never done before -- and learn something along the way. Plus, cooking and eating is something that, try hard as one might not to do so or to do less of, has to be done on a daily basis. This seems like fair fodder for a project and a way to make things a bit more interesting.

After much debating, we have decided to select a book out of our small cookbook library to use as the basis of this project: Pike Place Market Cookbook, 1992, Sasquatch Books. There are many reasons to select this book: (1) Pike Place Market is a top destination and a place that I enjoy going to even after living in Seattle nearly a decade and despite the dense population of tourists most of the year, (2) it is a treasure trove of fun and interesting ingredients and restaurants to which we have easy, year-round access, (3) we already own this book thanks to a wedding gift from a wonderful couple several years ago, and (4) we've only cooked a few recipes out of the book so most of the recipes will be new to us.

There are 154 recipes in the book, breaking out into the following categories:

Appetizers = 10
Soups & Salads = 15
Vegetarian Entrees & Side Dishes = 24
Entrees = 23
Seafood Entrees = 13
Local Chefs Cook at the Market = 6
Desserts = 27
Breads = 9
Sauces, Relishes, & Dips = 15
Beverages = 12

This is a reasonable number of recipes but still a big project, all said and done. J and I will trade back and forth writing about where we go in Pike's Place Market, how the time in the kitchen goes, and of course how it all turns out.