A Little Piece of Me...

I sent out two recipes out for testing this week. I find recipe testing to be the single hardest part of writing this cookbook. I think that it is really important to send my recipes out to friends and family for them to try without any further instruction from me, but I find myself on edge waiting for the evaluations to come in two to three weeks later. Since I have started this process, I have only pulled one recipe from the lineup due to poor testing, all in all an outcome that I should be proud of, but it does not change the fact...

I find it hard to offer a little piece of something that I have worked so hard on, to people (my friends) and waiting to see what they think of it.

I should note that I am incredibly lucky that I have so many people who were willing to test for me and who promised me that they would be honest no matter what. There is no use in testing recipes if people are not going to tell you the truth, and there is no point in publishing a cookbook that contains recipes that no one else has ever tried to make sure that they work the way that I think that they do.

It is also probably important to mention that I have experienced this feeling many times before. Every time that I am having people over to eat I stress about what they will think of my food. What if they do not like it? What if I made something that they do not eat? What if my pie crust was too wet? My chicken to dry? My beef overcooked?

I worry about every detail.

It all stems from the same place...

I find joy in feeding people, and I want them to enjoy my food.

This simple statement is why I want to write a cookbook. When I feed people and they like my food it is a euphoric feeling. The only thing that I can think of that would make that better, is sharing the recipes that I have for so long kept to myself and letting other people experience the joy of feeding their friends and family with my recipes. Pure Joy.

Another recipe goes out to my loyal testers on Monday...french toast...here is a picture of the end product in my kitchen...I hope that they like it as much as I do...