Storm the kitchen!

A challenge for anyone who still reads this blog! I figure there might be a small handful of you out there. Maybe. Are ya? Hmm. Well, this should let me know.

My lil' sis is having a hard time finding her mojo back in the kitchen, which I suspect might be a result of crazy amounts of cooking and baking she took on over the holiday season (this suspicion has not yet been confirmed). So she asked for a challenge that might help get her fired up again. Even better, thought I, let's all do this together!

Choose one of two options:
1) Go to Smitten Kitchen and click Surprise me! on the left sidebar three times. Of those three recipes, choose one to make as directed or to inspire your own version of SK's dish.
2) Look at your cookbook shelf. Choose the third book from the left. Go to page 58 (or whatever recipe is closest to page 58 if you hit a photo page or section break). Make that recipe as directed or use it as inspiration for your own dish.

Then get your butt back here and let me know how it went and what you made. If you used a SK recipe, post to the original and tell us what you did with it, and if you used a cookbook then let me know the title of the book and the original recipe, and what you did with it.

Fun! Bringing the mojo back to your kitchen, one challenge at a time.

On a related note, I recently found a new-to-me food blog that I'm falling in love with. Not Without Salt is written by a mom living in Seattle who put in serious time on the way to becoming a pastry chef in the best restaurants in the US, and now she moms-it-up, and blogs about both sweet and savoury delectables. Recently I made her lime and jalapeno marinated kale tostadas (except I used swiss chard in place of kale and had no avocado, and used chevre in place of the Mexican cheese). Mindblowingly good. To die for stuff. I already know I'll be craving them again within days so I'd better stock up on tortillas and tequila (for the accompanying margarita, of course). Go check her out!

UPDATE: Quick note, Katho is posting about this on her blog too, which I'm hoping means we'll have lots of participants and lots of reports on recipes tried. Hooray!