photo via french laundry at home

Sometimes, someone will take on a project of such difficulty and such magnitude, attempt such great heights and risk such great failure that you think they must be crazy, out of their minds, a little loopy and totally off their rocker. But you also have to respect their courage, their recklessness, the far-sweeping reach of their dreams and their great and admirable determination in pursuing them. And then, you applaud when they achieve those dreams, believe in a better world where everyone can be a winner, and hope they can invite you over for dinner.

Well, you hope Carol will invite you over to dinner. Her dream was to cook every recipe in the Thomas Keller French Laundry cookbook, and she's chronicling the attempt on her blog, French Laundry at Home. I think she is simultaneously a little nuts, and so brilliant I can hardly stand it. Thomas Keller is a genius, and his recipes seem incredibly complex and his food impossible to live up to--but Carol does it, all the time, with great success and fortitude, and lots of pretty pictures, too. She's inspiring, isn't she? She makes me believe I could be a better person. In the kitchen, anyway.