H!

I’m Leanne. 

I’m writing this from my apartment in Chicago, where I relocated exactly 5 months ago from Boston with my husband, dog, and 2 cats. THAT was a fun road trip.

I live in an old lingerie factory that has a terrifying basement straight out of a horror movie. I call it the Panty Dungeon, and threaten to put one of my cats in there when he misbehaves. Like when he doesn't help with the dishes.

I have a tendency to say things that sound great in the moment, and later think about what I said and question my sanity. That’s what happened right around New Year’s Eve when I told my friends I wanted to cook through an entire cookbook in 2015. I didn't have a book in mind, but I knew I had a shelf full of books that did nothing other than make my shelf colorful. 

My husband and I consider dining out our biggest shared hobby, and living in a new city with incredible restaurants opening weekly, we do that a lot. While that equates to great food and quality time spent together and with friends, it also means a lot of money blown and a lot of weight gained.

I didn't necessarily go about this idea with the intention of losing weight, and to be honest, that’s a good thing, because this cookbook would not be the one to do that. But I did like the idea of committing to something and saving money. So as soon as the idea took off, I started barking orders at the rest of the ladies, created an epic spreadsheet tracker, and talked a lot of trash.

That was until I got started.

To date, I've only made 5 things. One of those was a full tray of Salted Brown Butter Crispy Treats, which I ate by myself over the course of 3 days.

I am a die-hard baker, and a huge Smitten Kitchen fan. These aren't in the cookbook, but they are Deb’s all-time best recipe.

I enjoy cooking. The biggest challenge I've had with this is that I’m moody about eating. I’m not a picky eater – there isn't much I won’t try. But I’m a bit of a toddler in that if I don’t want it, you can’t make me. That makes sticking to something like this difficult.

I doubt I’ll finish the whole book in 2015. In hindsight, a more healthy cookbook may have helped me keep up the motivation. Or a book focused on quick week-day dinners. It has, however, been a lot of fun seeing everyone else make their dishes, sharing photos, providing challenges and reviews. 

And right now, publicly, for the whole world wide web to see, I’m committing to making the Tres Leches Rice Pudding for dessert tonight.

That means only 99 more recipes in 275 days left to go.

Scotland in the house! I'm this one:

There is quite often a child on my head, or a bigger one glued to various electronic devices in my general area. I live here:

That's Ayrshire in Scotland, although I'm not from here. I'm from Alberta in Canada. I love cooking and I love taking pictures, so when the group of us decided to take on this challenge, I totally leapt at it. As it happens, my family loves eating, so basically we all win. I was totally unfamiliar with Smitten Kitchen before buying the book, so it's been a fun experience so far. AND I AM NOT STOPPING. These have been my favourites so far: Avocado tartine with cucumber and sesame seeds. I have probably made this for lunch ten times since discovering this recipe. It's that good. Creamy and tangy and fresh tasting and insanely easy, too. Go make it, internet:

Blueberry polenta cake. This one is seriously good as well. I have always had a weakness for crumb topped fruit based cakes but adding cornmeal to it totally adds extra depth. When rhubarb comes into season here, I think I may try it with that.

Chunky granola. This is a sort of unassuming thing that is so much better than the storebought version that it's scarcely the same thing. I now always have this in my cupboard and went on about it for so long that work colleagues have made it too:

I've so far made 21 things, most of which have been breakfasts or baking. I used to bake quite a lot, and had fallen out of doing it, so it's been nice. However, I've also gained almost 5 pounds since starting this project, which means I should probably focus on salads and actual meals now? Onwards and upwards (after I eat three of the plum muffins I've just made)!

Our eyes (56 total) were maybe bigger than our stomachs

Hi! This is Pamela. I am your Massachusetts Rep for this experiment.

This is me:

I live here:

Just kidding (but that feels close, recently, with the snow we've been getting in Massachusetts.) I live here:

With these guys:

Anyway, HOOBOY 105 recipes are a lot of recipes when you consider that I am stuffing a huge amount of them into my pie hole. I may have just ordered some temporary pants off the internet which just arrived, turned out to be back pages of Parade Magazine pants, and this realization caused me to re-examine my life choices, specifically speaking about the number of times I have made the Whole Lemon Bars since we started this challenge.

It would maybe be one thing if I were to make a recipe, check it off our group spreadsheet (my current recipe completed count is 17, which puts me on pace to finish the challenge, but you will notice that that 17 does not include the recipe which calls for a mini blowtorch. (Which, don't worry, I've sourced. It's full sized, but this is okay, because I live two doors down from the fire station and, frankly, my kitchen could do with a remodel anyway.)) It is entirely another, however, when I make a recipe for 18 people when there are four of us, Hoover it up, and then make it AGAIN. Did I mention the snow, though? It's snowed a lot, and therefore I have given up on life and also on sunlight.

Anyway, while living in my igloo made of dirty snowbanks (I come to you from territory deep inside Snowmageddon 2015) I have completed:

1.) Whole Wheat Raspberry Scones
2.) Cheddar Swirl Breakfast Buns
3.) Kale Salad with Cherries and Pecans
4.) Honey and Harissa Farro Salad
5.) Emmentaler on Rye with Sweet and Sour Red Onions
6.) Butternut Squash and Caramelized Onion Galette
7.) Slow Cooker Black Bean Ragout
8.) Roasted Tomatoes and Cippolini Onions with White Beans
9.) Harvest Roast Chicken with Grapes, Olives and Rosemary
10.) Balsamic and Beer Braised Short Ribs with Parsnip Puree
11.) Maya's Sweet and Sour Holiday Brisket with Roasted Fingerling Potatoes and Carrot Coins
12.) Salted Brown Butter Krispy Treats
13.) Cranberry Crumb Bars with Mulling Spices (I also made the blueberry version from the website. Bonus points?)
14.) Whole Lemon Bars (No fewer than 5 times??? Send help.)
15.) Butterscotch Banana Tarte Tatin
16.) Mom's Apple Cake
17.) Grapefruit Olive Oil Pound Cake


So many of those I never, ever would have made if not for the challenge. The short ribs took hours and I don't normally do things that take hours, unless of course we are discussing naps. The Slow Cooker Black Bean Ragout  wasn't something I would have normally bothered with, but my kids LOVED it (particularly the cumin crema and pickled onion) so now it's in the regular rotation. The Butterscotch Banana Tarte Tatin looked really out of my league, but I managed to throw it together while half reading the recipe AND carrying on a conversation with a guest AND yelling up the stairs at my kids, and it smelled divine/ was delicious.

I am still nervous about the mussels.

-- Pamela

What is happening here?

Hello, internet!

So, we are 28 (or so, some of us are still on the fence about the commitment, which is understandable (I guess)) women all over the world who are going to cook each and every recipe in the Smitten Kitchen cookbook in 2015. I mean all 28 of us are going to cook all 105 recipes, not that we're going to cook 3.75 apiece, which would be slightly less noteworthy. Every two weeks, we'll have an assigned recipe that everyone needs to do during that time frame, and other than that, it's up to us to determine our pace and order.

Anyway, so we're all pretty different people. I mean, we're alike in a lot of ways. For example, we are all super hilarious and extremely attractive, obviously. But some of us like order and spreadsheets and some of us eyeball the 1/2 tsp of salt (me) and think spreadsheet is something to do with bed making which makes it not something we do (also me.) Some of us already cook or bake a lot, some of us had to order basic kitchen items prior to agreeing to the challenge. We live in: New York (Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island), Chicago, Houston, Portland, Los Angeles, Nashville, Washington D.C., Miami, the Bay Area, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Canada (Ottawa, Alberta, and Toronto!), Scotland, and Australia. We are: Attorneys, writers, teachers, editors, nurses, librarians, among other things. We even have a diplomat and a makeup artist, yo! We'll each be blogging individually at some point, and we're also on Instagram at CookTheWholeBook.

I recommend watching some of us stick the landing and some of us burn things, like our house down. (me.)

--Pamela