Future Challenges
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The way that Cookbooker is set up, every edition has its own separate page, so there won't be any confusion about which recipe you're reviewing. You can combine titles and view all recipes from the 'recipe reviews' page of a cookbook with multiple editions. I'm going to work on a way to display this more elegantly in the future, but for now it should do. The challenge page will display reviews from all editions, and I'll note in the rules that we welcome reviews from all editions. We'll also be using the new rules discussed here, where we do a random pick from everyone participating.
It will take me a little longer to set up the challenge page (and I have a child's birthday party to arrange), but we should have a launch of the challenge by the end of the weekend. Maybe sooner. -
I like Jaffrey's World Vegetarian as well-it's not just an Indian cookbook, not at all like Vij. I have it but have not cooked from it yet, but it looks very interesting. That would be my first choice. Second would be Moosewood. I have both editions and it has been a good reference. The Canadian Living Vegetarian has been a surprising source of good recipes for such a little book. The Spernatural Foods also looks good but I have no experience of it.
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Inspired by this, I ordered and just received my copy of Moosewood (the 2000 version) I still have many books in storage, so the original may be there--but what fun to re-visit this cookbook. I can remember first seeing Molly Katzen late one night years and years ago on public tv--and loving her and what she made. And I'm having fun browsing through the book now--it will be so interesting to see what we all think all these years later.
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cadfael, I have a copy of Jaffrey's World Vegetarian on it's way to me this week. I know one or two other people expressed interest in cooking from this book as well so maybe we could do a little unnoficial, mini, side challenge? Or, it doesn't even have to be a challenge, I guess it would just be nice to have company cooking from this book, it looks very interesting to me.
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I'm sorry I mistook Jaffrey's book for an Indian cookbook! It does look very interesting indeed. You're welcome to run a side challenge at any time, of course - I'd suggest starting a new thread on the forum where you can chat about it separately from the other books discussed in this thread here.
Oh, and @cadfael - I've had some great success with Canadian Living recipe collections in the past too. I own Canadian Living's Best Vegetarian Dishes which is a good one.
Moosewood will be our most-owned challenge title, however, so I'm hoping we can draw in some of the 'lurkers' on Cookbooker; it's small enough that we might even be able to collectively cook all the recipes. -
Getting to know Moosewood again (even if, for my part, it was mostly through other people's reviews) was very fun. I'll be excited to learn about the next challenge. There are so many excellent cookbooks!
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I'm considering doing a website/food blog for the next challenge. Heidi, of 101 Cookbooks, has a new natural foods book out in April, so I'm thinking this might be a good tie-in. It is another vegetarian challenge, but a very different type of food and cooking.
It's always going to be hard to choose for our 6 to 8 yearly challenges, no matter what! -
I love the idea of using a website/blog - my daughter was just telling me to suggest that same idea this morning. Continuing with vegetarian is also great.
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I'd love a Smitten Kitchen challenge at some point -- Deb has a cookbook coming out next year.
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Yes - I'm smitten by Deb's Smitten Kitchen!
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Yes, I'd love a Smitten Kitchen challenge at some time as well.
I'm all for vegetarian challenges in principle - I just will not participate very actively in them as they are difficult to combine with my current diet. -
Hmm, I too am a fan of Smitten Kitchen, and have enjoyed several of Deb's recipes already. I'll get back to everyone on this one; perhaps I'll allow myself to be overridden...
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Both smitten kitchen and 101 cookbooks are awesome. Really some interesting recipes. I'm looking forward to this challenge!
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I was wondering today how cookbooker could attract more members - I'd love to see more reviews of recipes from my cookbooks :) I think food blogs often achieve that by entering in foodie challenges like Hay Hay it's Donna Day - would something like that be a possibility for CB? I guess any CB member could participate by writing a review, and passing it of as a blog entry*, but maybe it would help if it were an official CB challenge too?
*) if the hosts' definition of what a food blog is isn't too strict... -
I agree that we all need to help boost the number of cookbookers. If it fits, I will comment on TheKitchn to talk up cookbooker, but I don't know if that helps. Andrew, what do think we could do to help spread the word about cookbooker?
LL/QS -
When I first came up with the idea for Cookbooker, I was convinced it was such a good idea, all I'd have to do is tell the world and it would spread like wildfire and we'd soon have thousands and thousands of users (naive of me, I now realize - this is a common feeling among people starting websites!). I sent out press releases and even had a few pieces written about the site in places like Publisher's Weekly. However I quickly realized that Cookbooker would be a long journey; when people first visited the site, there were not many reviews and we had to convince them that it would be worth writing reviews and using Cookbooker as a tool to track your recipes.
I also realized that Cookbooker wasn't ready for big traffic - there were bugs with the early site, and lots of features and tools I wanted to add (and which you've all suggested). I've been slowly doing this over the last year or so - since I do have other work which pays my bills, it's taken quite a bit longer than it would have if Cookbooker was my full-time job.
So I stopped promotion, other than the Challenges, and tried to focus on working on the site. I've also committed to spending years on this project - I know many well known sites which have 'overnight success' were around for a long time before being discovered by the world.
Cookbooker will never be finished (you should see my to-do list!), but definitely we're in a position now where we're a useful resource for people, and would benefit from wider exposure. I'm wide open for suggestions, and of course anything you all can do will have much more credibility, since you're all active users of the site.
Any comments online help for sure, @LazyLurker (the biggest traffic surge we ever got was when TheKitchn wrote an article about us last year), as long as they don't seem spammy in any way! And I'd love to find out more about places we could be mentioned. I'm not sure that a CB review would really count as a blog posting for Donna Hay, but maybe a challenge this year would connect? -
Hmm. If we did a challenge on 101cookbooks or Smitten Kitchen, maybe you could contact the publisher's marketing department? If they mention CB a few times we make sure that there will be many recipe reviews around (independently reviewed - no favours!)? And maybe in time this might turn into a source that could help you pay the bills for CB? In that case Smitten Kitchen would be better as you'd still have some time organizing everything, and maybe there would be a requirement to do the book instead of (or additionally to) the website?
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Thanks for the thought, Friederike. We have worked with publishers before for several challenges, including High Flavor, Low Labor, the Peter Reinhart Book, etc. They will mention us and the author mentions us, but in the grand scheme of things it has not been a huge amount of traffic so far - the real hotspots online are not publisher's websites but places like TheKitchn, Epicurious, the New York Times etc.
As we grow, we do have plans to work more with publishers, though - Cookbooker members are a great resource for reviews and I can see us eventually making pre-publication copies of cookbooks available for early review, and having a greater participation in marketing efforts for new books.
We'll do Smitten Kitchen for the next challenge - it is a great site, and although Deb does have a book deal, her book is not out for some time, so for now it would just be the website.
I can see Cookbooker also being a resource for food bloggers as the more website reviews our members post, the more feedback bloggers get and links back to their sites too. -
I am QS's ( or LL) 12 year old daughter. I personally feel that all the resent challenges are mostly vegetarian, and I think that I speak for both my dad and myself when i say, why not do a bar-b-que cookbook for the month of July? I think that this is a good month because it is warm and we always want to go get our bar-b-ques grilling good food.
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Grilling is a great idea. I'm just in the process of reviewing a Latin Grilling cookbook, and have been thinking about BBQ recently. We just have to find a cookbook that lots of people have, or is easy to get. I'm happy to take suggestions.
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It is I again, 12 daughter I know that not many people own it but dinosaur BBQ has grilling vegetables as well so i think that it would be good.
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My daughter and I both love this idea. Everyone is included, and we can get some new good ideas for the grill.
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Great! I'll set it up this week. It will take a little fiddling to sort this out; I think I'll have to add recipe tags as an option, so that people can then tag their recipes with the same tag so we know they're part of the challenge. I'll update when I sort it out. This will be fun!
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This is great. I think that this is a great idea to include everybody.
12 Daughter -
Sounds like a great idea. Looks like we'll have some grilling fun soon.
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I'll be interested to see the rules for this contest - we've been working our dutch oven, and dutch oven cooking requires briquettes and the great outdoors. But its not grilling. Will it count? Looking forward to it!
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I think I'll make it fairly loose - if it's on a grill, indoor or out, or on coals outside, it will count. The more it's outdoor and summery the better. I'm just finishing it up now so it will work with the tags. If anyone wants to get started tagging their recipes (they have to have been added since July 1st), we will all use the tag: "grilling" and that will be enough to get them picked up for the challenge.
Just to clarify, there has to be an application of heat - no summer salads, drinks, ceviches, what have you. -
I love a grilled pizza and veggie kabobs. This will certainly be fun.
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Looking forward to contributing to the grilling challenge!
For later in the Fall, once the weather cools down, I'd also love to do a challenge around Rose's Heavenly Cakes, the IACP award winnner, which was mentioned further up this thread.
Could also be very happy with either a Pie/Pastry Bible challenge, or a pie-themed challenge. -
It could be timed to correspond to thanksgiving - Canadian and US. Probably most cookbookers are making pie - but getting them to register it for the challenge almost seems like a challenge in itself!
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Love cakes, too!
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Good thinking! I have Heavenly Cakes and the Pie & Pastry Bible and they are in that rare category of cookbooks which really raise the bar for a home cook, and push you to a higher level. Rose is such a professional (and also incredibly meticulous) about making cakes and pies. This would be a challenge not unlike Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc, where people participating learned whole new techniques. Let's pre-book this one for October/November and try to cover both Thanksgivings.
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I'd love to see another cook the book -- maybe Dorie Greenspan or Rick Bayliss--tho if people want to do cake, Dorie Greenspan's newest has lots of desserts as well as mains and so forth. And her Baking is a great book. I like the idea of having the choice of salads, appetizers, stews as well as cakes and so forth.
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Yes, kateq - we'll do a single cookbook next, at the start of September. I've been away doing some camping/vacationing and am just catching up with things now. We'd talked about Barefoot Contessa a while back, and not done her yet, so I'm considering one of those. Dorrie Greenspan and Rick Bayliss are both good suggestions too!
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A cookbook challenge will be fun!
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I am a bigger fan of Dorie's baking books than her most recent one, Around My French Table. I have found the latter very beautiful to look at but the recipes are not as consistently successful as those in her baking books.
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Interesting, AJ. I love her baking books and have the new one but haven't really cooked from it yet.
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Labor Day is the traditional end to summer and, thus, the end of grilling season. Of course, many of us continue to grill right through the winter months - even when we need to shovel the snow in front of the grill to get to it.
I'd love to see a new challenge start. -
I'm hoping that Andrew can get publisher support. I love the challenges, and it would be great if cookbooker didn't have to spring for the prizes.
I, too, am anxious. Looks like I'll be buying a new cookbook, and I might even get it for that peckish sister of mine if he announces the title soon! -
Sorry for the delays on everything - I will sort out the grilling challenge and fire up a new challenge this week. I was away camping and also I've been frantically preparing for the fall as I'm taking on a bit of extra work at my day job this fall (it's an educational thing, so this is a bit of a crazy time of year with classes starting next week...)
While camping I took part in an 'iron chef' challenge, which was a lot of fun - it involved three enthusiastic home cooks, camp stoves and an hour to prepare a dish with potatoes for a group of foodie campers. I'll write something up about it soon, along with a recent trip to a local artisan bakery. -
Sounds like fun!
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