My favorite cookbooks are the ones that make me feel things along with feeding me good food. At the moment I feel like I have good momentum with this challenge having knocked out 5 out of 58 cookbooks. I just have to convince myself that I can't afford to slack off and I can complete this challenge. The moment I think I am ahead, is the moment I fall behind, and start procrastinating. The little voice in my head starts whispering doubts and discouraging me when I start to hesitate. If I hesitate, it is almost as good as quitting. Fortunately I am not doing this challenge alone. My good friends Lizzy is doing this challenge with me and my good friend GAT has just jumped aboard also. I am pretty sure that all things can be accomplished with a little bit of help. I am really excited to read about the next cookbook from Lizzy and GAT and if you are interested in reading their take in this madness, please check out their blogs at HaveYouReadIt and CookingWhileSloshed. The cookbook that I used you are not going to find in a book store. You will not find it for sale anywhere. The cookbook I am talking about is nothing more than a hand composed notebook from Jon's grandmother who has passed on. If you are following along on Library thing to the books that I am covering, it is simply titled Jane's Cookbook. I have never met my husbands grandmother, she passed on while he was a teenager. However, I do feel like I know her. I know her through the stories that I have heard about her, and the going through stuff in a forgotten attic. I am now getting to know her a different way, by going through one of her cookbooks. In a way it is like channeling the dead, because I now know that she had a deep love for seafood and entertaining, and that is something I don't think I would completely understand until reading the cookbook. There is crab or shrimp in almost everything. There are few and far between chicken recipes and I think that roast beef was just myth when I go through the cookbook.
I have come to love the very distinct hand writing and willingness to try just about anything. This sense of adventure and loving to cook certainly shines through when my husband is in the kitchen. The only thing that doesn't look like it got passed along to him was a love of seafood, which made this cookbook a little bit difficult to utilize. I, however have found a recipe that I could try right away and book marked another for a future adventure. (Yes, I will someday write about Chocolate Elephants, but today is not that day.)
The recipe that I tried was titled Orange Crush. After a busy Saturday of shopping, wedding and out to eat with my husband, all I wanted to do was sit back, have a refreshing libation. Not thinking about anything but following the recipe, I pulled down a mixing bowl and started to pour the ingredients into a large mixing bowl. That probably should have been my clue. One: A person should not need to get out a large mixing bowl if they are making drinks for two. Twenty, yes a mixing bowl is needed. Two: A mixing bowl would be over kill. I discovered rather quickly that the recipe for Orange Crush was really meant for 6 people, and that I had a lovely refreshing drink that I was not going to finish in one sitting. If I did I would be overloaded of vitamin C and probably a bit drunk.
After pouring my husband and I both a drink that tasted like fresh oranges and had a fair amount of orange liquor in it, I quickly decided to pour the rest into a pitcher for the fridge and have it for breakfast. A person can only drink so much orange juice, even if it does contain liquor. I am also not entirely sure what the difference is between a Screwdriver and an Orange Crush, other than the fact that you float Champagne on the top. I would certainly make this recipe again, but probably not for just Jon and me.
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