How to Begin

Hello, Universe. I have decided to write a cookbook. It it not because I want to throw away my career to become a fancy middle-aged food blogger or tattoo-covered diner owner (although both of those things sound really cool). I am writing a cookbook because I must. Over the past few years I have had too many ideas, cooking missteps, and small personal victories in the kitchen to let them slip away saying "I coulda" or "I shoulda". When I really think about it, cooking is where I hide. I suspect this is true for many people who prefer the quiet cutting board to a loud dinner party. If you can cook well, you are everyone's favorite person, regardless of if you say one word or a million. The oven never judges you. The measuring cups never lie. You don't have to be witty to whip some egg whites.

Looks like good things happen here 

So here we go, on this one gray, cold New Jersey day I drove myself to the local Barnes and Noble and bought myself this fancy overpriced notebook. Somehow, I think the white cardstock paper will make my ideas more professional, more real. If I spent $12.95 on this endeavor, there is no way I can back out, right?
I plop myself down in the Starbucks and start. The Awkward Girl's Cookbook. I have a general idea of what I want it to be: good recipes, real talk, broken up with short stories describing my awkward interactions with food and people.

First chapter ideas 

Way too often we are greeted with these glossy cookbooks with perfect women on the cover sitting in their lush gardens, flipping their perfect hair or strong armed men holding knives staring threateningly into the camera. There is never enough information in recipies, clear errors in calculation, and missing cook's notes. Hello, Suzy Hair Flip, why didn't you suggest I cut that cake up and fold it into my own homemade ice cream? Okay, Joe Big Arms, why didn't you tell me to pound that chicken out first?
So this is the beginning. It might be the beginning of nothing more than a fun hobby and snarky coffee table book that I give to my friends next Christmas, but it is a beginning nonetheless. Every time you are on the right track, the universe will test your resolve.  I can't be scared to start something and then to see it through. I will finish this cookbook and I hope you come along with me, one dirty sink full of dishes at a time.

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” 

― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist