Welcome to Cook's Central!

Peace! A friend of mine gave me an idea about trying to pool from the collective knowledge of all my cooking-expert friends - a Blog. It was so modern, yet strangely practical, and I thought it just might work, maybe better than the famous recipe email chain. Then I hemmed and hawwed for a few weeks or maybe months, not sure if it would really be my thing. But with the new year I figured, what the heck. Let's see how it goes :)

I originally wanted to name it The Cook's Book - what I thought would be a clever twist on the old standard - but apparantly I was 3 years too late and not quite as clever as I imagined myself to be. The real Cook's Book is now defunct, but apparantly Blogger is not into recycling names. In their defense, the Cook's Book will forever offer 4 interesting recipes to the world.

And now back to Cook's Central. I spend a lot of time (shhh) perusing the unlimited sources of recipes and cooking advice on the web, which translates into hundreds of eco-unfriendly sheets of printed recipes hiding all over my kitchen. But the web is a case of quantity rather than quality when it comes to selection. So when I'm feeling anti-internet, I invest in my growing and more traditional cookbook collection, which has it's own advantages. But the fact is, I often find myself sitting at my desk at work at 4:30 in the afternoon (as is the case now), fruitlessly trying to imagine what's in the pages of my cookbooks at home. Without them, I can't really plan for today's dinner, and without a plan, I'm pretty much useless. I could try to find something online, but with no inspiring words from a cookbook author, I have no idea where to start.

My friends are often my best source for what new recipe to try, so having a blog where they can contribute their favorite recipes and provide advice or commentary sounded like a fantastic idea. This way we would all have a place to look for recipes tried and tasted by people we trust, as well as a place to ask questions when we're stumped. I know a lot of recipes don't fit within my dietary restrictions (pork, wine, etc.) so I'd love to see how other people get around unwelcome ingredients!

The more the merrier! Let's make some food. :)