TASTY THURSDAY-CHALLENGE EDITION

I love cookbooks. I have a ton. A couple of years ago, I redid my kitchen and one of my "must haves" was a custom shelf to display all my favorite cookbooks. So my awesome Uncle designed and built a special cabinet for me with space for my cookbooks (and my wine). I have all sorts of cookbooks. Some of them are even autographed by my favorite chefs Giada De Laurentiis and Ming Tsai. Some I bought for myself, others were gifts.

Cookbook Decor

When it comes to cookbooks, I like ones with great pictures. I like to see what my creations are supposed to look like. And I also love it when cookbooks use fun little symbols to let you know if a recipe is vegan or gluten free , etc (like Giada's latest). I don't know, call me old fashioned, but nothing beats holding a cookbook in your hands and seeing and feeling the pages and knowing you're about to create something tasty from them.

So I have all these kickass cookbooks and you know what? I haven't even cracked the covers on most of them!!!  I couldn't even tell you what recipes are good or how the books are! It's terrible. My mom and mother in law are probably cursing my name out as they read this, because they've given me some of my prized cookbooks. It's not that I don't want to use the cookbooks, I just forget to actually use them.

But that's about to change. My girlfriend Jil was looking for a New Year's resolution that we could do together that could be fun. I told her about all my cookbooks and said "How about our New Year's Resolution is every week, we have to make a new recipe out of one of our cookbooks?" She loved it. She has the exact same problem. We both suffer from "cookbook decor".

How does this have anything to do with Tasty Thursday? Well, I'm about to share with you all the first recipe of the week that I will be making from my stack of never used cookbooks. And who knows, depending on the outcome, I may post others up here on a semi-regular basis.

Here you go... this week's winner is from Giada De Laurentiis' new cookbook Feel Good Food:

Grilled Scallops with Orange Scented Quinoa

*note because I am allergic to oranges, I'm going to make my recipe with Pineapple juice instead.

You can find the recipe on 179 in the cookbook. But if you don't have it, check out the link I posted to it from the Food Network's website.