A 50th Recipe Perspective

With the writeup of the 50th post, it’s time to take a look at how things are going. There are 1293 recipes in the book, and in the past 127 days I’ve blogged 50 of them. At this rate I’ll be finished on July 7th 2016, that’s assuming I can keep my cooking ahead of my writing. I’m working on ways of speeding things up, but I’m enjoying the process so what’s the rush?

Things were getting a bit unwieldy when looking through the archives, so I’ve gone back and tagged each recipe by chapter to make things easier.

More stats and musing behind the cut.

Here’s how things look by chapter.

I’m clearly not getting through all the chapters at the same rate. I’ve really got to start focusing on “Sandwiches & Pizzas”, “Fish & Shellfish”; All of the dessert sections, “Sauces & Salsas”, “Relishes, Chutneys, Pickles & Preserves”, and “Basics”. On the other hand I’m doing very well on “Hors D’oeuvres & First Courses”, “Beef, Veal, Pork & Lamb”, “Vegetables”, and “Fruit Desserts”.

I’m most worried about “Fish and Shellfish”, because my dining companion doesn’t like either. I find it hard to make something from the book just for myself, and I don’t have a lot of “drop by for dinner” friends who are particularly into fish. I feel OK about the rest of the sections I’m behind on, with the exception of “Puddings, Custards, Mousses & Souffles” and “Frozen Desserts & Sweet Sauces”. I’m not a huge dessert person as it is, and those classes would end up lowest on my dessert preference order.

I’ve been making acceptable progress on some of the slow sections, and I’m hoping that after another 50 recipes things will look a bit more balanced. The most recently blogged recipe was cooked on November 12th 2006, so I’m 9 months behind, and not catching up very quickly. I’d really like to get on top of things and blog the dishes soon after their prepared so that my memories are fresher, and so that anyone who ate the food will get to see it here while they still remember it.

Overall I’m very happy with the way things are going. I’m very pleased with the level of response this blog has gotten from friends and acquaintances, and a few regular snarky commenters have been keeping me very amused. I’ve also been very happy to find out that people are using and enjoying the recipes.

So, now I’ll turn it over to you dear reader. What can I do to improve your experience of The Gourmet Project? Is there anything you’d like to see that isn’t here? Anything you wish I’d stop doing? let me know in the comments, or email cad dot schwep at gmail dot com.