mary eats

I’ve been moonlighting.

No, I haven’t been asked to guest post on is my blog burning, or Ed Levine’s mondo popular Ed Levine Eats (he totally copied me, but, he’s a better blogger-what can you do?). No.

I have started a new cooking project/blog with my husband aka, the forearms in all my restaurant photos. Here at www.cookingcrowes.wordpress.com you can follow Kevin and I as we cook through a new cookbook each month, half testing our culinary skills and half testing our patience with each other’s culinary skills (he totally second guesses everything I say! Hello! I am in culinary school! If I say high heat, then high heat it is!)

The story goes a little like this. I have been cooking seriously since I was 19. I have also been collecting cookbooks since that time. Thus far I have amassed a fare collection, everything from celeb chefs (How to Eat by Nigella Lawson) to the classics (Mastering the Art of French Cooking) to the fads (Raw) not to mention the whole Lonely Planet World Food Series.

While Kevin supports my culinary endeavors in every way, he is always dubious when a package from Amazon arrives, or when he finds a crumpled half priced books receipt in my pocket (must remember to clean out jean pockets when putting them in the laundry). He claims that I haven’t cooked out of at least half of them, and I swear he calls every time I am browsing the cookbooks online or at the bookstore. It’s like he knows.

So, after a particularly sassy tiff, “It’s for my education!!! You don’t want me to fail because I don’t know the history of caviar do you?” I challenged him to cooking out of a new cookbook each month with me (this way I can buy obscure culinary tools and ingredients instead of cookbooks). My plan is working brilliantly, I tell you. Brilliantly! (insert demonic laugh here) I had also just finished Julie and Julia, the book born out of a blog, chronicling Julie Powell’s year cooking every recipe out of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. While I wasn’t committed to the idea of cooking out of one cookbook for an entire year, I wanted a project kev and I could do together. And a blog was born.

I’m in bold over there, so you’ll know who to skip if you’re just looking for more Mary. But if you love bumbling and (usually) high effort, you may enjoy it. What else do you have going on? Yeah, that’s right, come check it out.

Tell us what you think, we love comments.