Cookbook Crapshoot Rules

So how does a cookbook hoarder decide what to make for dinner?  I've decided on a new tactic I like to call Cookbook Crapshoot.  Here's how its going to work, along with some basic rules if you decide to try this along with me.

1. Randomly select cookbook.  There is always the "close-your-eyes-and-spin-around-and-point" option. That works fairly well. But I know where my favorite books are.  You probably do, too.  Aren't they are on that third shelf, in the second set of shelves?  I might just drag my finger along those books on that shelf, two, three, four books in, to get to that fifth book that I know is my go-to-in-a-pinch book.  So here is where the kids come in handy, and it is fun for them as well. I send them into the cookbook library and tell them to pick a book.  If they come back with one called "Big Book of Cookies" or "Chocolate Heaven", then that will be my baking book for later. (If you are like me and your dessert books are sort of shelved together, urge your helper to go to another shelf and try again.)
2. Randomly flip to page.  Again, the "close-your-eyes-and-flip" works. Or have someone, child or otherwise, choose a number between 1 and however many pages are in the book. Flip to that page.
3. There is dinner!  If it is the second page of a recipe, that is still the chosen recipe.  If there is more than one dish on the page, you can have some free will and pick your favorite. Or make someone else pick a number between 1 and 3, if there are 3 recipes on the page, and that will be your chosen recipe. If the roulette recipe is a side dish, you have chosen your side (or salad, etc.), so repeat step 2 to get your entree.

I think to make it not totally fractured (I am fractured enough), I will focus on one cookbook for a period of time.  A week or two?  Depends how often I'm cooking during that period, I suppose.  That way we all get a good idea of how good or how crappy the book is.  This will be a sort of trial-by fire cookbook review.

Some caveats*:

• If the selected dish is ridiculously out of season, you may randomly choose again.  For example, if it is December, and the dish calls for fiddleheads and morels... I mean, come on.
• If the selected dish is prohibitively expensive or fiscally irresponsible, you may randomly choose again.  For example, if it calls for duck confit and foie gras that you could only get from d'Artagnan, this may not be the perfect Wednesday night before soccer and rehearsal meal.
• If the ingredients for the selected dish are impossible to come by due to the peculiarities of your geographical location, you may randomly choose again. I live in Eastern Oregon, which may as well be an island. We have to drive 70 miles to get to Costco or Target. This is a challenge for me, having moved from a metropolis where the mammoth Asian supermarket was 8 miles away. Sometimes I just can't expediently or reasonably get things here. This can quickly turn a dish into "prohibitively expensive", having to drive 140 miles round trip to get some peculiar ingredient.
• If you are allergic to or religiously and/or morally opposed to an ingredient, of course, you may randomly choose again.  
• If you don't like an ingredient, ahh, here's where that fine line is drawn. What do you do if the dish has things you "don't eat" or "don't like" in it?  Now ask yourself, do you really not like it or have you just never tried it?  My sister has a list of the seven foods she doesn't eat (more on this in another post, I'm sure), which she quantifies as those ingredients that make her gag.  Peas don't make her gag, she just doesn't love them.  Did she flip to Risi e Bisi? Well, looks like she's having risotto with peas tonight!  I'm encouraging you to try things you might not necessarily have been drawn to automatically, so give it a shot. You may find out you like parsnips after all.

*Please note, I reserve the right to change the rules, especially if I am feeling particularly peevish.