What do you do when you have hundreds of cookbooks? Heidi Swanson, of 101cookbooks, answered the question for herself by starting her blog several years ago. Originally, she picked a cookbook from her collection each week and chose a recipe to make and photograph. Now, she writes a lot more about recipes that she develops as part of her cookbook-writing process, although she still highlights new cookbook finds as well. She's an inveterate collector, for sure!

And recently, I came across another blog, called The Millions, which is more about literature than cookbooks, but still deals with the question of what to do with too much to read. That blogger assigns a number to each of the books that he's waiting to read and then uses a random number generator to pick the next one! You'd have to really enjoy a sense of chance to use that process. No pushing the latest Harry Potter sequel to the top of the list.

So as a big book geek and librarian of my own growing cookbook collection, I decided I'd better do something to make sure I'm properly appreciating my stash. Not quite ready for the random number generation process, I took an old-fashioned approach. I wrote down the title of every book that I own that has savory recipes, including memoirs and food literature, like Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes. Then I cut them into individual pieces and put them all in an old cookie tin. I made my husband and neighbor guess how many I had. Bob guessed high at 350 and Ari guessed really low at 50 (apparently she doesn't understand the extent of my collection!). The real number was ONLY 245. Note that this doesn't include any of the food reference books or pastry and baking, not to mention preserving and bartending tomes.

The next step was to pick a winner for the week. Of course, if we only used one book a week, we'd take 5 years to get through the current collection. And chances are good that I'll add more to that any day now. Oh--and I didn't even include my own book (Hands-Off Cooking: Low-Supervision, High-Flavor Meals for Busy People) in the mix. That one gets used every week anyway. So I decided that we should try 2 or 3 recipes a week from the random pick and then use whatever else we wanted to fill in.

So this week's random pick was...the Metropolitan Cook Book. Not the most exciting of choices, but I had committed to this process and when would I otherwise use a vintage recipe collection from the thirties? Perhaps some lovely Broiled Finnan-Haddie or Veal and Ham Pie this week? Maybe some Rarebit or Boiled Onions in White Sauce? Or if I'm feeling off my feed, then the helpful Invalid Cookery section will come in handy. Toast Water anyone?

I've changed the links on the bottom right column to show which books I'm cooking from this week, crowned by the Random Pick. Join in the fun! Put your dinner-time dilemma to rest with my patented new Book Geek Project. I'll let you know how it goes.