Hello, AFBA’ers!
I know it has been a really busy month, which means I appreciate even more all the work and effort that you all have been putting into the cookbook recipes, which are rolling in as the deadline (tomorrow) approaches.
Throughout the past few weeks, I’ve been getting some excellent feedback from the food community at large that indicates we are working on something that is truly ground-breaking. (And thanks to Cooking Planit for signing on to be our cookbook sponsor!) We are going to go ahead and close submissions for now at the end of the day on May 1 [SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED], but after we cull through the recipes that we have, we will have another window during which you can submit recipes to help fill in any gaps and — here’s the exciting part — non-recipe food content.
What exactly do I mean by “non-recipe food content”? As I wrote in the post last week, many of the best community cookbooks contain far more than recipes, and we’re going to include a number of essays about thing such as how the Austin food scene has changed in recent years, its iconic dishes, where we shop for ingredients and how our group formed. This will give people who don’t necessarily specialize in recipes a chance to contribute to the book, plus it will give readers a better understanding of our community.
I’ll post a list of essays that we’d like to have when I announce what kind of recipes we need to help round out the book, but feel free to pitch ideas to afbacookbook@gmail.com. I’ll be meeting with the AFBA board and cookbook committees in coming weeks, but I imagine we’ll be collecting the second round of content in June.
Thanks for all your help in putting this cookbook together! You are part of a unique project that I have a feeling is going to make waves even outside our fair city.