How (and why) The Book came to be and why I am going on the trip

I am publishing a cooking book under a Creative Commons license. All of April and most of May I’ll be on the road, cooking and promoting the book in independent book stores and cooking supply stores around the country.

A little more than a year ago I started writing longer posts on this site and spent considerable time on websites such as eGullet and Quora writing and answering questions about food. Soon people started telling me that I should write a cook book. There’s only one snag – I don’t like cook books. Food and cooking are too cool to be reduced to recipes.

But the idea kind of stuck and I started dabbling with the idea of writing a book about cooking I would want to buy and read. Or give people as gifts. Heck, I thought, if I strike it rich one day I might become a culinary Gideon and leave them in drawers in hotels. And then I woke up and realized that not only was I a rotten writer, I also didn’t know jack crap about marketing a book or selling it to a publisher.

Yet, I started writing. Every chapter, I decided, would start with a story from the back of the house of one of the restaurants I had worked in. Something to illustrate a point. Or a contemplation on the history of the grilled cheese sandwich. Maybe a survey of tools and their maintenance. A funny story about fish. Or that one time we had to make 700 merengue pies in one afternoon. Following the story was a chapter on techniques and cooking. Not a cook book, a book about cooking was what I wanted. And then, to round it up, some recipes and tricks.

I sent the first chapter, on stocks, soups, and sauces, to a few friends. They seemed to like it. And I received corrections, additions, and stories in return. Their stories? In my book? “Why not,” I thought. And then it struck me.

Instead of writing a book, running to find a publisher, compromising on quality and content, I would write a Creative Commons licensed work. Want a cook book? Take out the stories and reduce the techniques. Want a story book? Take out the recipes. Want to turn it into a vegan or raw food cooking book? Just replace the recipes. With a Creative Commons license everyone would be able to remix, rewrite, add, and subtract. And make it better.

There’s only one issue with such an idea. It’s never been done before in the cooking book sector. Since recipes themselves can not be copyrighted, cooking book authors and publishers guard jealously everything else. Presentation, methodologies, pictures, words. And trying to sell the idea of all this being “open” to a publisher is, frankly, about as futile as trying to sell ice cream in December.

So I had to print it myself. And do all the other things good books do. Go on a book tour. Market. Call independent book stores and whomever else would be willing to carry the printed version of a book that is available for download online.

That’s when the book tour morphed into something bigger. While I was out, I thought, driving the country and reading from the book, I might as well stop and cook. Call old friends and make new ones to cook underground dinners in the cities I passed. Visit farms and ranches and write about the food that we eat, every day, from the source to the plate. Peek around the urban farms in San Diego and LA and Salt Lake City, the community agricultures in Colorado and the rehabilitation projects for former inner-city wastelands in the Midwest.

Come April I’ll be going on the trip of a lifetime. And I’d love to meet you along the way, chat, maybe have coffee or cook with you when I am passing through. I want to meet that chef or cook you admire, read from the book at your favorite cooking book store, and explain to as many people as possible why they should download and remix The Book in June. And together, you, me, and everyone else, we might be able to write the cook book of a century. You in?