Three Cubed Project

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The Three Points have totally different approaches to finding tasty things to cook. Rebecca has select cookbooks and keeps up with food trends through magazines and her culinary forays into the New York food scene. Kate, meanwhile, buys cookbooks like other women buy shoes (200-plus and counting). Robyn goes back and forth from the Internet to well-used cookbooks, but her most important sources of recipes come from her family.

No matter how we approach food preparation in the kitchen, we do default to the things we know and like best. So to push boundaries, we are launching the Three Cubed Project on March 27 (3/27). Along the way, we hope to enhance our repertoire and discover new favorites. At worst, we might foist some questionable concoctions on friends and family. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch, amigos!

The arbitrary plan is this: We crack open a cook book or magazine, make what is on Page 327 and document the results. (When the book is shorter, we go down to Page 227 or 127 or 27, depending on what is first available.) We’re starting with Page 327 because it starts with 3 (did I mention this was arbitrary?) and, if we stuck with a simple 3-cubed model (Page 27), we’d likely be making a whole lot of salad dressing or, if it’s an older church cook book, Jell-O salads. And nothing good can come of that.

When some of us run out of cook books, we’ll move on to magazines, what’s in the library or, possibly, to guerrilla actions involving sneaking recipes out of other people’s houses. And if we have already made the Page 327 dish, we have the option of moving to Page 227 (or 427).

We’ll track the results here.  Feel free to join in the fun.

March 2013

• Cuba Calling (Cuba Cocina!)

August 2012

• Don’t Try This at Home (A Treasury of Southern Baking)

June 2012

• Living on Cayman Time  (The Governor’s Lady: Entertainment & Recipes at Government House, The Cayman Islands)

May 2012

• Summer Blonde (Baked: New Frontiers in Baking)

February 2012

• Banana Salad (Harper’s Cook Book Encyclopedia)

December 2011

• Rum Diary (Cooking with Wine and High Spirits)

November 2011

• Orange You Glad (The French Cookie Book)

October 2011

• Swinging ’70s, 7Up Cake (Cooking with Love and Butter)

July 2011

• Hog Days of Summer (Mayan Cuisine: Recipes from the Yucatán Region)
•  Caribbean Creamsicle (The Sugar Mill Caribbean Cookbook: Casual and Elegant Recipes Inspired by the Islands)

June 2011

• Move Over, Cream Puff (Kaffehaus)
• Gracious, Miss Lady! (Dinner at Miss Lady’s: Memories and Recipes From a Southern Childhood)

May 2011

• In the Berry Month of May (Keys Cuisine)
• You Can Tuna Piano… (The Complete Robuchon)

April 2011

• Czech Please (Favorite Recipes of the Nebraska Czechs)
• Better Than Cake (Flavors of Hungary: Recipes and Memoirs)
• Cheers to the Royal Wedding (Great British Cooking: A Well-Kept Secret)