Happy New Year! Did anyone do anything exciting to ring in 2015? Per usual, the Englishman and I celebrated New Year’s Eve with In-N-Out Burger, Champagne and movies. I prefer to set goals at the beginning of each year rather than “resolutions” and one of my goals this year is to cook more new recipes, so I’ve decided to do a 2015 cookbook challenge.
Every year for Christmas and my birthday I’m fortunate enough to be gifted with lovely cookbooks. I’ll spend a couple of days pouring through them and writing down the recipes I want to make, and then alas, I’ll only make one or two from them and go back to old standbys. And since I have accumulated quite the collection of cookbooks, it was time to do something about it.
My goal for the year is to create one new recipe from one of my cookbooks each week. It can be as simple as a drink recipe, or a baked treat or even an entrée, but it has to be something new. Hopefully this will inspire me to get more creative in the kitchen!
The inaugural recipe of the 2015 cookbook challenge is Braised Winter Cabbage and Potatoes from Thug Kitchen.
I chose this recipe for a couple of reasons:
1. It was the perfect New Year’s Day food since cabbage is supposed to bring good luck for the year.
2. I’ve been wanting to try braising cabbage for a while now and haven’t done it yet.
Thug Kitchen is a vegan cookbook, but I’m a pretty big carnivore, so I made it with beef stock instead of veggie stock and added ground pork meatballs on the side.
This recipe is super easy to throw together and is full of good things like cabbage, carrots, potatoes and celery. It was the perfect winter meal.
So if you are vegan/vegetarian/want to add more vegetables to your diet, then you should definitely grab the Thug Kitchen
1 recipe down, 51 to go! What are your food goals for 2015?
Love this idea! Great way to make use of all those cookbooks we have.
I might need to get a copy of Thug Kitchen for myself. I miss eating vegetarian meals!
you need a copy! or you can borrow mine for recipe inspiration 😉 lots of good stuff in there!
This is such a good idea! I, too, am guilty of relapsing to the “tried and true” recipes, rather than continuing to try new things. I may have to try something similar to what you’re doing.. 1/month to start me out? Thanks for the inspiration and Happy New Year!
This is such a great idea, I made a recipe from one of my new cookbooks already, and was so proud! 🙂 Isn’t braised cabbage so good?
braised cabbage is delicious! i think i need to try stuffed cabbage rolls next.
Such a necessary and great challenge!! We both have cookbook collection fever, so I totally understand where you’re coming from with this. Cannot wait to hear updates.
Love this! I actually made a very similar goal, except mine is for at least 2x a month vs. weekly. 🙂 I also just bought my boyfriend that Thug Kitchen cookbook because he’s a vegetarian (I’m not), and the recipes looks great!
*look (I hate typos)
they are great! i make some of them as side dishes since i’m not vegetarian either…but they do have some great breakfast ones 🙂
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