I Made Every Single Recipe from One Cookbook — Here’s What I Learned

My Villain Origin Story

As a goal-oriented person, sometimes I can be a little . . . intense. With over 258 items on my bucket list and counting, I’m definitely a person who Does Things for the Sake of Doing Them. Skydiving. Getting a tattoo. Visiting an alpaca farm. It’s all part of adding zest to life.

With that spicy spirit in mind, I made an ambitious New Year’s resolution back in 2019: make every recipe from a single cookbook.

#1 — January 2019, Buttermilk Biscuits: Today is a snow day; we’re supposed to get around thirteen inches, and what better way to celebrate a cozy day in than homemade buttermilk biscuits? We made bacon and put cheddar cheese on them for savory biscuits, then had strawberry jam for sweet ones.

Naturally, I was inspired by the movie Julie & Julia and its real-life source material, wherein food blogger Julie Powell attempts to conquer all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But I wasn’t feeling quite that ambitious, and the idea of having to cook things like Tuna Niçoise sounded slightly nightmarish to my picky taste buds.

Thus, my parameters for a good cookbook candidate were that it:

1. Featured foods I would feasibly try
2. Involved around a hundred recipes
3. Contained enough of a challenge that I’d actually learn something