Pot Kettle Internet

Pan-Seared Ahi Tuna Sandwiches

Chris found this for me about a week ago. I’ve wanted to tell you about it, but I’ve held off, thinking I’d rather wait and show you my finished book. But, let’s face it. I’m not going to have it in my hands any time soon.

I started out thinking I’d just do 20 recipes at a time. I was entering them carefully, one by one, but by the time I’d racked up 6 complete recipes, I’d thought of lots of others that I wanted to add but didn’t have enough time to do right then. I was afraid I’d forget my inspiration, so I made entries for each of those with just the titles, thinking that I could go back and edit them later. I came up with 70-something! All of them are straight out of my head, which means to make sure I’m writing them down correctly, I’ll have to wait to write the entries until the next time I cook the item.

So it’ll be a while.

But this (a Tastebook, in case you didn’t follow the link above) is still a pretty neat idea. Basically, you build a collection of recipes — ones you make up, ones passed down in your family, or ones from several online sites connected to Tastebook.com — and turn them into a virtual cookbook. Once you’ve got a decent collection, Tastebook will put the recipes into a hard-back cookbook with a cover designed by you and have it delivered to your doorstep. (Of course, you have to pay for this service.)

The book comes with all your original and/or hand-chosen recipes and, if you want, personal photographs of your attempts at following those recipes, as well as your own descriptions and notes, just like a real cookbook! Tastebook makes collecting all your favorite recipes from the Internet a breeze by letting you (legally) import them straight from sites like myrecipes.com, allrecipes.com, cooks.com, and epicurious.com. Plus, your Tastebook cookbook is a binder, which makes it easy for you to add new recipes (available by individual order from their site) at any time. If you’re not up to collecting recipes yourself, you can also buy Tastebooks with recipes by/collected by people like the editors of Cooking Light and Tastebook Moms.

Anyway, I’m working on two right now: The Good Life on the Table: Healthy, Everyday Recipes (which will be a collection of my personal recipes) and Thicker Than Water: A Heritage in the Kitchen (which will be a collection of family favorites). I’ll let you know how they turn out!