In light of the absolutely horrifying thesis meeting I had this morning, I am really going to have to be a lot more diligent about my research, which, to me, reads as "Hurry up and finish compiling those recipes so you can get to the testing part, lady! And maybe get published some time this century, perhaps even before your thesis is ever done!"

I have come up with a total of 77 recipes. Not all of them I've made before so they make require a bit more testing time. I am a little concerned though. Of all the things I have made before, I do my best to make it my, but some of my recipes are...shall we say "other recipe inspired." At what point is it plagiarism. And what about any other potentially copyrighted recipes out there that I have never even seen but happen to be rather similar to...? I don't want to steal anyone else's glory, just like I wouldn't want somebody to take a recipe I worked hard to create, change one small thing and then take the credit for it in their cookbook. I really have no idea how the whole cookbook publishing thing really works to be honest. I guess my plan right now is to finish it as soon as I can and then mail it to as many influential people in the field as I can think of really.

Also, since I am trying really hard to make my cookbook stand out from everyone else's as much as possible, I am trying to give lots of my recipes clever nicknames, or name them after all the people I know and love as a thank you for their support while I worked on this. I am hoping for every recipe that's named after a friend or family member, I could include a nice picture and short little blurb about who they are and why they are so important to me and how they made this project possible. I think of it, not only as a way to make myself more unique and marketable, but to give me a chance to really dedicate my work to all the people who really deserve it. <3

Anyway, I'm pretty interested to see how a few of the new things work out. I feel like I put use chicken way too much so I am trying to include some other things for more variety. Like lamb. I've never even seen it in stores or eaten it, much less prepared it for other people. hmm. Please, if any one out there ever reads this at all, tell me something about cooking lamb. I could make tiny lamb sliders and then call them lamb-burger-inis. lol. Will anybody out there please comment and tell me I'm clever. I'm desperate for some affirmation here.

Onward march to testing. Oh, my aching wallet. :/