An idea would be to take what Food 52 does with a year-long book and add that into a cookbook per month. That way, we have a cookbook that we can cook from throughout the year if we don’t like the monthly cookbook.
If it makes things easier, I will also volunteer to run COTM nomination/voting threads on a rotational basis.
Also, I am gone for a lot of March, but I will cook from whatever book wins. I also bought Ethiopia and will make some stuff from it as well. I am super sorry for not cooking more. My docs have me focused on losing weight. And unlike some, I am not able to alter recipes to make me lose weight. I just have to eat my tried and true food program. So, that is the reason I haven’t been more present. And I have a LOT of weight to lose… because reasons… so this process hasn’t been short.
In any event, what I don’t want is to dilute COTM and keep diluting it until it no longer resembles anything approaching COTM. I’d rather just switch to a whole new format. I don’t know if I can express it properly, but I always felt it was a sad thing when something that wasn’t viable anymore kept trying to be. I guess, what I am saying it that we can either fight to keep what we have or move on.
My vote is to keep fighting. But not if I am alone. And again, I am willing to try and be more involved in making food, but I am definitely willing to be more helpful in the getting the COTM threads going.
What does too diluted look like to you and what does fighting look like? I’ve been fighting to keep COTM alive for the past two years, but the status quo really isn’t working or sustainable.
I always want to participate but I won’t if the book is a cuisine I don’t care about or from an author that I have already been unimpressed with. Not a fan of the quarterly book idea but that is just me.
Mel, I am not entirely certain. We have all tried to keep it going. You and Caitlin have done the heavy lifting. I just know that I haven’t participated as much as I could have. And I don’t know if others are also going through a huge slump. I suspect it is so. I also think I felt like COTM would be here as I put it on the back burner while I get my shit together. And again, maybe others are at that point as well. I don’t know if it’s combination of losing all the past COTMS- I am STILL depressed over it even though I know nothing can be done about it- and trying to deal with serious medical issues. This is also me stream of consciousness typing as well. But if the choice is losing COTM or cooking more and running nominations and voting a couple of times a year, I will choose the latter.
And diluted… you know, when COTM isn’t “of the anything.” It’s just a cookbook we sometimes all cook from at some point during the year. I am not sure how the path will look that leads there, but I’ll recognize when it arrives.
But I have also cooked from books I wasn’t excited about, just for the sake of participation and keeping things going. I think some of that has to come in if we want this to keep going and be there when we want it to be, rather than dying out.
Looks like we are evolving no matter what.
So why don’t we try something for a couple of turns, see how it goes and how people feel about it, and we can pivot again if we need to?
So let’s try COTQ with more than one book.
I do think 3 is too many, and I do also think we should make an effort to have one be “mainstream” / easy and one be “interesting”.
And then we’ can see how we are feeling in a few months.
The idea is to keep it going and have fun while doing it, right?! Let’s not lose the fun!
I regret that unanticipated family events prevented me until today from cooking from Ethiopia, a book I’ve nominated many times and was eagerly anticipating cooking from again; my first attempts were on Chowhound.
Sort of unfortunately for me, it’s not because I’ve been away (that’s not been possible for many months).
Some times unanticipated things happen that disrupt sincere intentions. I wish they hadn’t happened to me this month, but they did. I nominated and voted in good faith.
I’ll stay out of active nominating and voting because I don’t know when I can participate. I’ll happily participate with whatever choices are made when I am able.
Thanks again to those who have done the heavy lifting here, and I’m sorry I couldn’t help.
I certainly do it, perhaps more than anyone, but I probably cook at home more than others do in general. I’ve averaged 10 recipes per month over the last three books, none of which I was remotely interested in. I feel like I have worked hard over the past two years to keep this alive, not just in the coordinating, but in the cooking. But it’s not enough, and frankly, I’m frustrated and tired.
But I really can’t blame people who don’t cook from a book that doesn’t interest them. It’s an investment of time, money, and energy. I’ll do it because I’m very dedicated to COTM, but I get why people don’t. Which is why I think having multiple books going at once might help. Without doing any more books over the course of the year, it would at least up the odds that one of the books would be “doable” for someone, whatever “doable” looks like for them.
I would like to participate again but the books seem to whip by more quickly and I find myself uninterested in much of the current crop of new books (the NYT best books list last fall basically left me cold) - while I have dozens if not hundreds of great books sitting on my shelf and a world of recipes onlline. Maybe the market has reached saturation point.
I tend to get interested in project or theme books in which I really get absorbed into a particular cuisine - riffs on the same old thing do not do it for me. And I have been travelling and birding a great deal over the last couple years burned up a lot of time and pre-dinner anergy, and touch wood I look to be doing more of the same. So I think I would be more willing to get engaged if we chose one or two worthy books or cuisines or authors to explore over a longer than one month trajectory - I could work around trips and other bursts of activity better … Also, Ive noticed that sometims folks start in on a month and drop out because their families get bored with the novel food.
A longer period would enable folks to dip into the COTM sporadically and not do a marathon. Then maybe pick a less demanding book or author (tiktoks anyone?) to satisfy that yen in some of our folks…
Are there “cooking from…” threads here? I had no idea. There may be some I would enjoy reading/joining. I tend to just keep on with the threads I am already on.
I think it is difficult for those without kids to realize just how much the pandemic took out of our cooking mojo. Three meals a day, ad naseum, without our usual supplies or any breaks. I haven’t regained that fully, so project books have zero appeal. They did at one time, but it will take a while for me to get that back. Long way of saying, sure, let’s go to quarterly with more than one book.
I think right now, unfortunately, cooking doesn’t have the same “looking forward to” aspect for me that it used to. But Lulu will be off to college in the fall. Maybe after a decent stretch of relaxing a bit about dinner, I will get that back. I hope so!
