......and then the obsession started to grow

It was the summer after my senior year in high school. It was a rainy day and I was being a lazy teenager happy that I didn't have to go to work, but bummed that had rained on my day off. I was flipping channels and discovered a little known cooking show on the USA network, or was it Lifetime.... I can't remember. There was this really young, nice looking guy cooking fantastic food and the show was called "The Main Ingredient" with Bobby Flay. I sat fascinated by it. I was like nothing I had ever seen before. I was used to watching "Great Chefs of the World" and "The Graham Kerr show". This was nothing like that. I was hooked. Little did I know Bobby Flay single-handedly started a problem in my life, but it wasn't because of the show.

A few weeks later I was shopping a bookstore (one of my favorite hobbies) and I found his book. I remember myself saying to myself (quietly so no one would think I was crazy) "I know that guy!" I picked up the book and opened it with wonder. The pictures were gorgeous! So different then anything I had ever seen.

My mom only had a collection of old church cookbooks with illustrations. Nothing this beautiful! The dishes were works of art and each recipe was handcrafted with new and bold ingredients that I had only dreamed of tasting! I bought the cookbook and it started an avalanche of possibilities. I became a member of a cookbook club. When my husband (boyfriend at the time) would go into the regular books, I would hide myself in the cookbooks knowing I could find stories in them.

From then on the collection grew..... I don't have a favorite genre, I have some favorite authors, some I have been reading all along and some I have just discovered. I love all the flavors off the world. My collection ranges from country home cooking to easy sushi now. From easy family cooking to the most exotic dinners that take ten hours to make. I loved them all and read them all and then put them on the shelf to sit.

That's right.... I put them on the shelf. I never used them like a real cookbook should be used. Sure they are wonderful books to learn from... Textbooks that have taught me all the cooking lingo I need to know, but I never cooked out of them. I could come up with a billion and one excuses too... No money, no time, family is too picky, no money.... Oh don't get me wrong I always have had the dream.....but the excuses always pushed it away, until now.

I have decided that this would be the perfect forum to unleash my dream and chronicle my families reactions, give my reviews on the cookbooks that I have and try and least 3 new recipes a week out of each of my cookbooks for the next year and maybe longer. I have 287 of them.... I told you it was an obsession.