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

maggiethecat

By maggiethecat
in Cookbooks & References

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Maison Rustique

Maison Rustique

Posted
Posted

I've been collecting cookbooks for quite a while. Most of them stayed packed in boxes after we moved from California to Missouri due to space limitations. I am trying to downsize so we can move to an even smaller place, so began pulling in the boxes a year or so ago. I've already got several boxes of them I won't keep, my sister has taken a few and a friend took a few others. I'll get there eventually.

 

Earlier this year, I started pulling one each morning and posting photos on my Facebook page. I have a few friends who have been fascinated in seeing some of the really old ones and it has been fun for me, too. I'd forgotten about so many of them! I wish I'd started on Jan. 1, because that would have been a good way to count how many there are. I've still got quite a few to go.

 

And, bless her heart, an online friend needed to downsize, so she sent me two big boxes of cookbooks. Yikes! I know she means well, but I will likely be getting rid of most of them, as I just don't have space for all of them anymore. Not to mention that I'm always buying new cookbooks that come out thanks to some of you here with your posts about them (Vivian Howard's books!) and some of the other food groups I belong to. 

 

I love my cookbooks. I hate my cookbooks. 🙃

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Deb

Liberty, MO

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blue_dolphin

blue_dolphin

Posted
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11 minutes ago, weinoo said:

 

Why get rid of the classics?  

 

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

Ha, ha, ha!  I use Greens all the time. Making the black bean chili this weekend and the white turnip soup soon. The Silver Palate has gone back and forth. It was on the chopping block for quite a while. Went back on the shelf yesterday. 
The tomes may stay or go. 

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Alex

Alex

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We probably should have a topic for folks who are contemplating -- or actually -- winnowing their cookbook collection, and could use some encouragement and empathy. Or maybe there's one already but I've forgotten about it.

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"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."

 

A king can stand people's fighting, but he can't last long if people start thinking. -Will Rogers, humorist

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kayb

kayb

Posted
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42 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

Ha, ha, ha!  I use Greens all the time. Making the black bean chili this weekend and the white turnip soup soon. The Silver Palate has gone back and forth. It was on the chopping block for quite a while. Went back on the shelf yesterday. 
The tomes may stay or go. 

 

The Silver Palate should stay if, for no other reason, the carrot cake, which is astonishing.

 

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Don't ask. Eat it.

www.kayatthekeyboard.wordpress.com

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weinoo

weinoo

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4 hours ago, Maison Rustique said:

I have a few friends who have been fascinated in seeing some of the really old ones and it has been fun for me, too.

 

These I'd like to see!

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Mitch Weinstein aka "weinoo"

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Kerry Beal

Kerry Beal

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IMG_5958.thumb.JPG.df3c582f2a1c5d3f6a78d9963b23e5f1.JPG

 

Hubby has been working on a renovation in the basement for quite a number of years (23 to be precise - but to be fair in that time there were a lot of other renovations that took precedence like making the house accessible for the rug rat). So finally the book shelves got completed - boxes that had been packed away for years were opened - and we soon discovered that there really wasn't enough shelf space for all the books we have purchased over the years. 

 

Of course any truly important books that had been packed away - we had to buy another copy of - so there was some duplication! I think I've run across 9 copies of the Bonnie Stern Cuisiart Cookbook - was never able to leave a copy behind in Value Village! I can now. Extra copies of The Best of Electric Crockery Cooking by Jacqueline Heriteau and Mable Hoffmans Crockery Cookbook to name a few. Couple of duplicates of some Maida Heatters.  Low fat was in style when these books hit the boxes - straight to Value Village for them! I've been viciously culling. 

 

I have taken more than 30 boxes of books that hubby doesn't care for anymore to work and I am dropping a few at a time to various shelters. 

 

So this is my wall - there is another shelf of mine on the other side of the room - my Modernist volumes don't fit here - so they are in another room - along with my chocolate books and my old medical texts. I'm looking forward to going through the 8 volumes of The Netter Collection of Medical Illustrations that my father bought for me when I graduated from medical school (he was a little surprised at the cost I recall). 

 

 

 

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the Chocolate Doctor
www.thechocolatedoctor.ca

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FauxPas

FauxPas

Posted
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8 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

I've been viciously culling. 

 

Wow! You must have started with a LOT of books if this is after a major cull.  😄

 

We have moved quite a few times over the years and each time I get rid of a bunch of books, but they still manage to start accumulating with each new address. Nothing like your collection though!  🙂

 

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Alex

Alex

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Very, very cool. On the leftmost bottom shelf, the book furthest right: is that Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts? That was my gateway drug, er, book to torte-making.

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"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."

 

A king can stand people's fighting, but he can't last long if people start thinking. -Will Rogers, humorist

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  • 1 month later...
Darienne

Darienne

Posted
Posted
On 11/20/2021 at 9:55 AM, Alex said:

We probably should have a topic for folks who are contemplating -- or actually -- winnowing their cookbook collection, and could use some encouragement and empathy. Or maybe there's one already but I've forgotten about it.

I am winnowing.  The books are all, so far, going to our local library and they'll either keep what they want and discard the others in the sale items.  

 

For me it was time.  A factor perhaps of age.  And also I find myself finding the occasional new and interesting recipe online.  Plus I suppose we have pretty much settled down to a comfortable repetition of favorites.  

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Darienne

 

learn, learn, learn...

 

We live in hope. 

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FrogPrincesse

FrogPrincesse

Posted
Posted
On 9/1/2010 at 12:54 PM, FrogPrincesse said:

Finally did a count as I started entering my books into EYB (under the name fprincess). 53 books so far, including cookbooks and food-related. I have a few more that are not in the database and have not yet included (older books or French cookbooks that are not available in the US).

Most frequently used probably Les Halles (Anthony Bourdain).

Most recent acquisitions - How to Pick a Peach (Russ Parsons), The Raw and the Cooked (Jim Harrison), Beach Bum Berry Remixed (Jeff Berry), Larousse des Desserts (Pierre Herme, in French)

I am at 186 books as of today (and 988 notes entered in EYB). This includes cookbooks, cocktail, and general food-related books. That is +133 new books in 13 years, or an average of 10 per year. I am now more picky with my purchases due to space limitations! 

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