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


maggiethecat

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I'm just back from Hong Kong with four more - I'll have to start a new shelf! The Essential of Classic Italian Cooking, Ad Hoc, Everyday Harumi, and the Taste Bible. I'm not sure how I'll keep a record of all the recipes I want to try.

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I counted 140 this morning.. Many books I have had since the 1980's and still use those older titles for certain favorites. I have given away many titles I no longer actively use since I want my cooking library to be books I use with some regularity. I have become more descriminating about what I buy these days looking for diversity among the collection.

I like to improvise in the kitchen, but I cook from recipes all the time and follow them closely on the first go around, making notes in my books on what i like or not (so I don't go back and repeat a no go a second time.

Thanks for starting the cookbook count. Bonnie

Bonnie

'Variety is the spice of life'

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Bonnie,

it is great that you provided a new total. because the original reason for the thread is done, the only totals will now be the actual total counts provided by each postr.

The link "Cooking - Food - Recipes - Cookbook Collections" on my site contains my 1000+ cookbook collections, recipes, and other food information: http://dmreed.com

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One more: Why Italians Like to Talk About Food

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."  -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Act 1

 

"Imagine all the food you have eaten in your life and consider that you are simply some of that food, rearranged."  -Max Tegmark, physicist

 

Gene Weingarten, writing in the Washington Post about online news stories and the accompanying readers' comments: "I basically like 'comments,' though they can seem a little jarring: spit-flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots."

 

"...in the mid-’90s when the internet was coming...there was a tendency to assume that when all the world’s knowledge comes online, everyone will flock to it. It turns out that if you give everyone access to the Library of Congress, what they do is watch videos on TikTok."  -Neil Stephenson, author, in The Atlantic

 

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer

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169,329 including one for me: the doorstop-sized "Forgotten Skills of Cooking" by Darina Allen. Now I know how to kill a chicken and build a chicken coop. Most highly recommended.

Edited by maggiethecat (log)
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Margaret McArthur

"Take it easy, but take it."

Studs Terkel

1912-2008

A sensational tennis blog from freakyfrites

margaretmcarthur.com

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Two more for me: one on chocolate...a woman can never own too many chocolate cookbooks, top notch or otherwise...and my first all cookie cookbook ever. Both at a "Gently -Used Books" store.

Darienne

 

learn, learn, learn...

 

We live in hope. 

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  • 2 months later...

OK - another precinct reporting: 164 remaining, at the moment. My wife and I recently split up the cookbook collection (among other assets), so my part is down by probably a third; I'll replace some, but not all of the ones which have gone to live with her.

By the way, reluctantly honoring Maggie's initial rule that digital editions not be counted, I must still protest mildly. There are rare volumes which are realistically only available to most mortals in the new-fangled form; for instance the digitized collection of historic American cookbooks from the University of Michigan. (A URL is here.) I'm not sure why the volumes I've gotten there (and from other digital sources) are less booky than the ones which have a more obvious main ingredient of dead tree.

I think I'll also cast a random bit of chum into these waters, given that they're swimming with bookish foodies, a diffusely-distributed species. I'd love to find copies of a couple of books which are still available, but which are gaspingly expensive. The first is a French one: Les secrets des fermes en Périgord noir, by Zette Guinaudeau. The second (I'd ideally like to find the French edition, but the English translation would also be splendid): Traité de charcuterie artisanale, tome 2, by Marcel Cottenceau, Jean-François Deport, and Jean-Pierre Odeau. If anyone has either of these in their embarrassingly bloated collection which might cost me less than my left prairie oyster, please contact me.

Peace, good cream, and a nice Armangac, Paul

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I currently have cataloged at http://dmreed.com:

747 Asian cookbooks with 610 cover pictures

5 downloadable OLD Asian cookbooks

278 Non-Asian cookbooks with 269 cover pictures

I do not catalog a cookbook until I have perused it and there are several cookbooks which I have not yet perused.

The link "Cooking - Food - Recipes - Cookbook Collections" on my site contains my 1000+ cookbook collections, recipes, and other food information: http://dmreed.com

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  • 2 weeks later...

Five new-to-me cookbooks: one Time-Life, one Williams-Sonoma, a low-carb cookbook (although I have no idea why), a dessert book called Dessert Book with four authors, Canadian publisher AND!!! the prize of all: Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen.

Darienne

 

learn, learn, learn...

 

We live in hope. 

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Here's another 44 to tack on.

Living in small apartments is not conducive to a large collection. But now that we have a big ol' house... :rolleyes:

I'd forgotten all about "Still Life with Bottle: Whiskey According to Ralph Steadman"

I'll be curling up with that one soon, possibly with a glass of something smooth and toasty.

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  • 2 weeks later...

One new cookbook for me: The Ultimate Italian Cookbook by Carla Capalbo retrieved at the Cavan Mall, Dump, Transfer Station.

Darienne

 

learn, learn, learn...

 

We live in hope. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I only have one. Eric Ripert's return to cooking.

I used to just have the one: French Laundry Cookbook

Then through gifts or circumstance I stumbled upon a few more...

Alinea

Paleys place

Under Pressure

Yolele! which I bought because the guy was really nice and did a demo at the FCI

I have 3 other books on food, and then my course books from school which have a ton of classic french preparations...

Edited by ChickenStu (log)
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  • 2 weeks later...

5 new books for me

Mexican Every Day - Rick Bayless

Molto Gusto - Mario Batali

River Cottage Preserve Book

Another jam book

Simple Fresh Southern by the Lee Brothers

"Salt is born of the purest of parents: the sun and the sea." --Pythagoras.

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Ill say about 300.

Including all the Culinaria series, All the Time Life Good Cook series, Manifold Destiny, Marlboro Cigs Western Cookbooks, Todd Wilburs books, Purefoy Hotel, Hillary Clintons WH Cookbook, Calf Fries to Caviar, Ben Franklins cookbook and Kitty Litter cakes etc books..

I seriously recommend the Marlboro cookbooks (amazon) for their sheer creativity alone

Oh and I have the Chicago Bulls Cookbook with Michael Jordans Mac and Cheese recipe..

Edited by GlorifiedRice (log)

Wawa Sizzli FTW!

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  • 1 month later...

Add another two for me, courtesy of suzilightning over in the Free Cookbooks thread:

Libations of Life: a Girl's Guide to Life One Cocktail at a Time -

Brun, Dee

The New Vegetarian Cookbook - Abensur, Nadine

Anybody who has extra cookbooks, please go to the thread and list them. It's a great way to introduce new cookbooks to people that might not otherwise get them, and a great way to cut down on a little clutter.

"...which usually means underflavored, undersalted modern French cooking hidden under edible flowers and Mexican fruits."

- Jeffrey Steingarten, in reference to "California Cuisine".

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add 15 more for me... i do actually add things as well as giving them away. 2 CIA books - Spanish and French and 13 Art of Eatings that someone gifted to the library and were about to be sold so i rescued them. can't wait to read the one on Alsace and the one on Champagne.

Nothing is better than frying in lard.

Nothing.  Do not quote me on this.

 

Linda Ellerbee

Take Big Bites

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