Cookbooks – How Many Do You Own? (Part 5)

[Okanagancook]

I have a lot of really good cookbooks and I want to use them instead of the internet so I use my Eat Your Books account.  It is a fantastic resource and many users make good comments about the recipes.

[TdeV]

@Okanagancook, Eat Your Books no longer has a lifetime membership and it's really, really pricey. And I have an issue with someone else controlling my data. I mean that I'm the one who'll have to organize all that stuff. What if I live another 40 years? OK, unlikely. How about 30? Or even 20?

 

Think of all the used cookbooks that could buy! 🤣

Edited May 4, 2019 by TdeV (log)

[Okanagancook]

 I find the site very useful.  I am there everyday.

I like the daily articles, book reviews and comments about recipes made by members which are usually right on.

  For all that I am not sure I would classify it as really, really pricey.

 

[blue_dolphin]

When EYB came along, I was at a point where it was hard to justify purchasing any more cookbooks because it was easier to look up recipes on the internet, though the results were often of lesser quality than what was in my cookbook collection. 

My membership was the key to making good use of my books and generating quality search results from the blogs, magazines, newspaper columns, etc. that I follow. 

The current annual membership of $30/year is around the cost of one newly published cookbook.  Certainly more pricy than what I paid for a lifetime membership but it's a trade-off I'd make in a minute.  

@TdeV, it sounds like you would be happier investing that $30/year in lots of used cookbooks.  I can see that side of it but I'm happier making good use of the collection I own and adding to it judiciously.   It's all good!

[Okanagancook]

I also bought a life time membership at launch...best $50 I’ve ever spent.

I agree about making it a breeze to utilize the cookbooks owned.  Really, less than the price of a quality magazine.

It is easy to set your cookbooks up in your library.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

On the subject, can anyone tell me how to organize Kindle cookbooks (or any books, though it happens all but two or three of mine are cookbooks) on the iPad app by category?  In other words is there a way to make subfolders of books on the Kindle app?

 

[blue_dolphin]

3 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

On the subject, can anyone tell me how to organize Kindle cookbooks (or any books, though it happens all but two or three of mine are cookbooks) on the iPad app by category?  In other words is there a way to make subfolders of books on the Kindle app?

 

 

I made a bookmark called Kindle and I apply it to all my Kindle books when I enter them.  If you've got a huge collection and need to go back and mark them, it's a bit of a bother but once it's done, it's handy.  You can pull up the whole list of Kindle books or use it in the search criteria for a book or recipe.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

21 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

I made a bookmark called Kindle and I apply it to all my Kindle books when I enter them.  If you've got a huge collection and need to go back and mark them, it's a bit of a bother but once it's done, it's handy.  You can pull up the whole list of Kindle books or use it in the search criteria for a book or recipe.

 

I'm sorry, I don't understand.  I think what I'd like to do is, in Kindle-speak, make collections.  I don't know how to do this.  Does it involve bookmarks?

 

Bonus question:  I've marked pages with bookmarks but I don't know how to use them.

 

 

Edit:  I have 202 Kindle books uncollected.

 

Edited May 6, 2019 by JoNorvelleWalker (log)

[TdeV]

My husband and I read a lot of ebooks. He reads on a Kindle and I read on Android. We both use Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) to save the library (where you can add your own keywords), although he loads the Kindle ebook before connecting with Calibre and I load the ebook after uploading to Calibre. To interface between Calibre and the ebook reader, we both use Calibre Companion (http://www.multipie.co.uk/calibre-companion/). This enables me to upload ebooks to my Android tablet and my iphone from the same Calibre library management system. Much more useful than the straight Kindle app.

 

Edit: I have more than 1,000 ebooks, mostly not cookbooks.

Edit: Library management does not include the contents of the ebooks.

Edited May 6, 2019 by TdeV
Clarity (log)

[nickrey]

35 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

I'm sorry, I don't understand.  I think what I'd like to do is, in Kindle-speak, make collections.  I don't know how to do this.  Does it involve bookmarks?

 

Bonus question:  I've marked pages with bookmarks but I don't know how to use them.

 

 

Edit:  I have 202 Kindle books uncollected.

 

 

Open the Kindle App. Press and hold the book title. Options come up for what to do with the book. Click on "add to collection." A list of your collections will come up. Either click on an existing collection or click on the plus sign in a circle at the top. This allows you to add a new collection name.

 

You can put the same book into multiple collections.

 

For my 2057 cookbooks, I use the following collections.

 

US Chefs

Italian

Pastry, Bread & Desserts

Vegetables and Vegetarian

Food Non Fiction

Spanish and Portuguese

Food Science, Safety, and Processing

Seafood

Ingredients Cookbooks

UK Chefs

Sauces

Coffee

BBQ and Smoking

How to Cook

Diet

Australian Chefs

Appetisers

Cheese

Asian

Vietnamese

French

Techniques

Charcuterie, Pickling, and Fermenting

Mexican and Sth American

Sous Vide Cooking

Scandinavian

Special Occasion

Street Food

Indian

Spices

Korean

Japanese

Sandwiches

Burgers and Hot Dogs

Middle Eastern and African

Chinese

Eastern European

Meat Cookery

Dumplings

Pizza

Food Styling and Photography

Caribbean

Salads

Thai

Russian

Soup

Indonesian

Jewish

Modernist

Mediterranean

Greek

German

Cajun and Creole

Desserts

Irish

Juices

Laotian

Malaysian, Singapore, Indonesia, Sri Lanka

Nordic

Other European

Seasonal Cooking

Share Plates

Small Plates

Snacks

Southern Cooking

Stews

Wine and Drinks (actually this is broken down into a number of smaller categories because of my study interests).

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

Edited May 6, 2019 by nickrey (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

@nickrey you win the internet.  Thanks, I think I understand.

 

But I'm not sure I could find 2057 Kindle cookbooks I wanted even if they were free.

 

 

[TdeV]

@nickrey, marvellous collection! How do you find a particular recipe or, for example, a recipe using sweet potatoes?

[JoNorvelleWalker]

16 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

I made a bookmark called Kindle and I apply it to all my Kindle books when I enter them.  If you've got a huge collection and need to go back and mark them, it's a bit of a bother but once it's done, it's handy.  You can pull up the whole list of Kindle books or use it in the search criteria for a book or recipe.

 

@blue_dolphin I think I figured out that you were answering about marking books added to Eat Your Books, and I was asking about marking books added to the Kindle app so that one could locate the books more easily.

 

For example:  if I wanted to cook kale* and entered "kale" into EYB the first hit that comes up is "Seared beets with walnuts over wilted kale and micro greens" from Vegetable Literacy by Deborah Madison.  I have walnuts, so I'd need to find the book.  I open my Kindle app and am presented with piles and piles of pretty books to scroll through.  Wouldn't it be nice if I could select a subject category "vegetables" or an alphabetical category "M", say, for the author's last name?  (Dewey Decimal number wouldn't help me much.)

 

In my example I found Vegetable Literacy without too much trouble (just a bunch of scrolling) but it is not always so.  @nickrey came up with the solution.  Now all I need is the discipline to carry it out.

 

 

*not that I would cook kale of course.

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

5 hours ago, TdeV said:

@nickrey, marvellous collection! How do you find a particular recipe or, for example, a recipe using sweet potatoes?

 

By happenstance I opened Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy to the chapter on sweet potatoes.

 

But to give an answer to the question, use Eat Your Books to find the recipe.  Simply replace "kale" with "sweet potatoes" in my example above.  I might even eat the result.

 

[nickrey]

11 hours ago, TdeV said:

@nickrey, marvellous collection! How do you find a particular recipe or, for example, a recipe using sweet potatoes?

In eatyourbooks. Simply type sweet potatoes into the search function. I have 2,841 recipes featuring sweet potatoes. I suspect I'd narrow it down with a few further ingredients.

 

I often search through the recipes, sometimes look at the book, but often create a variation on the recipe. I wouldn't be able to do this without having read the books and cooked from them previously.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Sadly I come up with but 353 recipes for sweet potatoes.  So much I am missing.  However for what it's worth I do get 9 results for hartshorn.

 

[nickrey]

6 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Sadly I come up with but 353 recipes for sweet potatoes.  So much I am missing.  However for what it's worth I do get 9 results for hartshorn.

 

I get 28 and don't even know what it is.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

7 hours ago, nickrey said:

I get 28 and don't even know what it is.

 

https://forums.egullet.org/topic/158357-baker’s-ammonia/

 

 

[SLB]

I didn't know about Eat Your Books, and I can't overstate how excited I am!!!

 

I'm fixin' to give subscriptions for Christmas!

[Okanagancook]

@SLB you will love it.  That is where I start when I want to make something.  Take the time to learn the search capabilities...it will save you ton of time.  Also, check the notes of the recipe, people are very good about commenting.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

4 hours ago, Okanagancook said:

@SLB you will love it.  That is where I start when I want to make something.  Take the time to learn the search capabilities...it will save you ton of time.  Also, check the notes of the recipe, people are very good about commenting.

 

Anything I should know about the search capabilities?

 

[Okanagancook]

The whole Search Section of Help is a must read.  

 

I recently learned that you can search a cookbook author's recipes from all the books in your Library.  For example you want a lamb dish by Ottolenghi.  Go to your bookshelf and recipes then type in Ottolenghi lamb and up come all his recipes with lamb.  One can then go on to use the "filter by" section narrow things even more.

 

 

Or using the Boolean search terms can really help to narrow the search down.  

http://support.eatyourbooks.com/customer/en/portal/articles/990426-using-boolean-search-terms

 

 

[TdeV]

Just tallied our paper cookbooks into a list: 182

DH is responsible for <12

🤓

[blue_dolphin]

My cookbook shelves had become overcrowded of late. Cocktail books were already moved to the dining room.  Wine book, books on flavor and other food writing were spun off to the other side of this room.  I know I could weed some out, but they feel like my friends.  

 

 

So I decided to treat myself to a couple more sets of shelves, which were delivered yesterday:

The shelves are made of reclaimed lumber and I thought they might be very different in color from the others that I've had for 10+ years but they fit right in. 

 

For the moment, at least, there's room for more:

 

The books on the floor, beneath the shelves are on the chopping block,  They're what I call the "tomes."  Joy of Cooking, Betty Crocker, Better Homes & Gardens, Gourmet, NYTimes Cookbook and others of the sort.  They're the books I learned to cook from.  I'd pull them all out and compare recipes to figure out how things were done, what steps, temps, etc were common and which were not.  I don't use them anymore but I'm struggling with getting rid of them.  We'll see what happens. 

[weinoo]

9 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

 Joy of Cooking, Betty Crocker, Better Homes & Gardens, Gourmet, NYTimes Cookbook and others of the sort.  

 

Why get rid of the classics?  

 

I mean, Greens and the Silver Palate should be the ones on the chopping block!