April Fool

I thought briefly about constructing some elaborate blog-related hoax for today, in honor of April Fool’s. Then I remembered that I’m not Jim Halpert and that practical jokes are not my forte.

It’s just as well, because at the moment I seem to be on the receiving end of a practical joke being played by my ISP, where they cut off my service at home, give me a different reason every time I call tech support, make me pay to find out that their equipment is (possibly) at fault, and then force me to wait four days while they ship a replacement (which may or may not fix the problem), instead of letting me walk 10 minutes down the road to pick up a replacement myself.

This reminds me of why I’ve never really liked practical jokes: the person they’re played on rarely considers them amusing. But I have no doubt that my ISP, telecom monopoly though it may be, appreciates the simple joys in life and finds the whole thing side-splittingly hilarious.

So, as usual when life gets to me, I’m distracting myself with cooking. And with all this extra time that I can’t spend, say, doing my job, what better activity to engage in than another round of the Cookbook Challenge?

Regular readers may remember the first round, from December of last year. If you’re new, the rules are simple, and designed for anyone who owns more than one cookbook:

1. Count up the number of cookbooks you have. (Include magazines, clipping binders, electronic folders—whatever you’ve got that you want to explore further.)
2. When you’ve got a total, pick a number between one and, say, 50. (Better yet, if you can, have someone else do it for you, to ensure that it’s really random.)
3. Count through your cookbooks until you get to that number, and pull out the randomly selected cookbook, magazine, folder, etc. (You could also pull names out of a hat if you want to really get serious, but this is quicker.)
4. Commit to cooking at least one new recipe from that resource in the next month. Five, if you want to really challenge yourself.
5. Tell about what you discovered—send me an email, post about it yourself, comment here (I'll report back on what I found). Did you discover a new favorite? Or is this cookbook just a pretty face with nothing in it you can see yourself cooking?

I've already made my selection: Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking. Perfect for the coming of autumn to Canberra: more reasons to turn on the oven and whip up something tasty!

So come on: even if you’re not in the throes of computer despair like me, you may be trying to shake off the northern winter doldrums, or looking forward to cooler weather cooking after a hot southern hemisphere summer, or getting ready to host a big event for Easter or Passover. Join in and look for buried treasure in your own recipe library!

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