“Dinner: Changing the Game” by Melissa Clark

What's this? Another cookbook blog post? 

I promise I am not trying to turn this into a cooking blog. It is, and always will be, a reading blog. However, technically I did read this entire cookbook. In fact, I did more than just read this entire cookbook: I cooked every single recipe in it. All 225 of them! Did it take years? Yes! Was it awesome? Also yes! I even took it on vacation with me, more than once. (Hi, Hot Springs and Santa Fe!) I cooked a recipe from it the first time my son brought his then-girlfriend, now-wife over for dinner. I cooked a meal for my best friend from high school. I was brave enough to invite our foodie friend (the might-as-well-be-a-chef type) over for a meal cooked from this book. If there were an award for Best Cookbook Ever, this one would win hands down (and forks up).

Every time I cooked a recipe, I took notes. (Right there in the cookbook! My mom would be horrified. Five-year-old me still vividly remembers the We Don’t Write In Books conversation.) My notes are a combination of helpful hints for next time (when did the heat need adjusting? what did I use as a substitute for broccoli rabe? when did I use feta because I couldn't find any ricotta salata?) and diary entries about the who, when, and where of each meal. 

Towards the end I even started sticking photographs of my finished meals on the pages that didn’t already have a picture. (I just wish I’d had that idea four years ago!) My photos, of course, are nowhere near as beautiful as the ones already in the book, but they add another dimension to what has become an intensely personalized keepsake.