I recently retired after 45 years in the hospitality and related software industries and am very much looking forward to devoting attention to redirecting my hobbies into mainstream pursuits – writing, travel and cookbooks. Coming from a long line of educators and librarians, it has always struck me that this convergence of interests was highly advantageous, if not downright predestined.
I have traveled extensively for decades but it was only ten years ago that I began journaling the trips as a blog for friends around the world. Would that I had begun much earlier but, the writing gradually became as important as the destinations and that, in turn, began to meld with the objectives behind my cookbook collection.
While I collected cookbooks for many years, it wasn’t until my mother’s collection passed to me that I decided to get serious about it. I settled on three objectives:
1. I wanted to be a generalist rather than a specialist. Cookbook subjects are legion, and I wanted to focus on those works that were the most significant within any given topic.
2. As a former history major, I was particularly interested in those works within the last 150 years that had an incremental impact on the evolution of culinary perceptions.
3. Every author has influences and I wanted to explore the connections between peers and from one generation to the next.
Over the last 30 years, that intensively curated collection has grown to over 7,100 titles but there is always more to discover. I quickly realized that many of the publications were not only out of print, but out of sight. Today, the volume of new releases is staggering while space on bookstore shelves is limited. In support of the collection, my writing documents those titles and authors that remain relevant and deserve greater visibility.
I stumbled across these forums as I was tracking another “lost” cookbook and was excited to realize that you are the very people whose input I need. I will be posting questions in a couple of the forums, and I hope you will be amenable to sharing your experiences.
