SGOTW stand for Sunday Game of the Week, a brain-child of Cookieee, a member of the CLBB. It's a weekly game designed to get us using those cookbooks that may be sitting on our shelves, gathering dust. Obviously I'm a little late to the game, as they are already on #47! I hope you will bear with me on this long post as I attempt to explain this game and why I want to play.
Here are the basics behind this game:
How to play "Sunday Game of the Week"
1. Pick a number from 1 to ? (depending on how many COOKBOOKS you have) or if you want, I will pick the number. (At this point, she is picking the numbers for us.)
2. Go get the COOKBOOK
3. Pick out a NEW recipe
4. Post what COOKBOOK you picked, TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT IT, what year it was published, the author, what kind of book, it's history with you, whatever personal information you would like to share.
5. Post the recipe you picked and tell us why, if you want to.
6. Sometime this week, make it.
7. Post a review, hopefully before the next weeks game starts
SUNDAY GAME OF THE WEEK is open to anyone that would like to play
YOU ARE ALL WELCOME
There are 2 "hats". One holds suggestions on different ways to play the game and is used every 5th game. The other holds numbers of books that people submit that they would like to have drawn. These all may be made at anytime from anyone.
If you don't have as many cookbooks as the number drawn, just keep counting what you do have, over and over till you reach that number. We want everyone to be able to play.
As I've mentioned before, I don't buy a lot of cookbooks. I have 25, to be exact. That sounds like a good many to me, but when I read that some people own 100, 200, even 800 cookbooks, I am stunned. I'll never own that many, and frankly have no desire to, but I would like to expand my collection a bit.
To clarify how to number your cookbooks: You can either count them as they sit right on the shelf, or you can put your titles into a spreadsheet or list and number them. If you count them as they sit on the shelf, you would need to be careful to shelve them exactly the same way each week to avoid repeats. I decided that a spreadsheet is easier - I never re-shelve my books the same way each time. Since I only have 25, and many of the numbers they pick are higher than that, I simply repeated my list all the way up to 200.
My reasons for joining in this game are twofold. For starters, even though I don't own many cookbooks, I'm not even making good use of the ones I own! I rely so much on the internet to search for recipes, that I tend to not even pay much attention to what's sitting right on my bookshelf. While it is much easier to search the internet when you are looking for a specific recipe, rather than leaf through cookbook after cookbook, there are many treasures behind these pages, just waiting to be found. This game will be a great way for me to sit up and take notice of things I have been overlooking.
Secondly, as much cooking as I do, I tend to rely on the same sources over and over. While I love Cooking Light and rely on it heavily, I'd like to expand a bit and try recipes from other sources more often. I think it will also help me realize which cookbooks I really like and which cookbooks I could probably get rid of. And perhaps I will finally discover a cookbook or two that I really, really enjoy.
This game relies on using cookbooks only. At some point however, maybe starting next week, I'd like to expand on this idea and start trying out a new recipe from a chef or internet site that I don't normally cook from. I don't know if this would be a weekly event or what, but I'll post with more details when I get it figured out.
If you'd like to join in SGOTW, just look here each Sunday - or over at the CLBB - for the newest number pick. I'll be posting both here and on the CLBB each week, so please come join us. If you're a blogger who would like to participate and would like me to include you in my weekly SGOTW post, just send me a link and I'll be happy to include a link to your blog. But please remember that this is a CLBB event, not a Savory Notebook event - I just thought it would be interesting to post about here on my blog too.
If you have any questions about how to play this game, you can read this thread on the CLBB where I asked quite a few questions before jumping in.
Last week's cookbook number was #34. For me, this ended up being Moosewood Restaurants Low-Fat Favorites.
I have not made more than one or two recipes from this book. Truthfully, I really can't tell if I'm all that crazy about it, but I'm not ready to give it away yet. I need to break out and try things that don't normally appeal to me - such as recipes that aren't loaded with carbs and cheese - and I think this cookbook would be a good one for that.
Anyway, the recipe I picked is Mushroom Wheat Berry Pilaf and I will be making it tonight. Ideally, we'd have made our recipe and posted a review about it on the CLBB by now, but my dinners got pushed back due to several unexpected baseball practices last week. I guess the good news is that, as a result, most of my meals are already planned for this week!
I'll be back later to post my review on this recipe and to let you know what's happening for next week's game.
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