Jump to content

  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

Cookbooks – How Many Do You Own? (Part 3)

chile_peppa

By chile_peppa
in Cookbooks & References

 Share

Recommended Posts

chow guy

chow guy

Posted
Posted
I hate to lower the average number of cook books per person, I have but just one (and it was given to me as a joke).  I am a 100% food lover, as long as I don't have to cook!

Please don't take away my membership!  :sad:

I 've gotta know, what's the name of the book?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Priscilla

Priscilla

Posted
Posted

OK, Miz Mags: Dusting, listening to the Kill Bill Part 1 soundtrack, attritting the return-to-stacks stack stacked on the stairs.

Came up with 642 food-related.

(I know I've got some additionals out in the barn, inhabiting the precarious limbo between meriting shelf space and being bunged into the Friends of the Library bag, but I won't add any that don't reinsinurate themselves.)

Priscilla

Writer, cook, & c. ●  Twitter

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
maggiethecat

maggiethecat

Posted
Posted

85,946.

Welcome Tough Cookie. I want to know the title of your one and only too. And remember: we all started with one cookbook.

Miss Pris: Your total doesn't surprise me a bit, but we'll have to inventory the barn.

Margaret McArthur

"Take it easy, but take it."

Studs Terkel

1912-2008

A sensational tennis blog from freakyfrites

margaretmcarthur.com

Link to comment
Share on other sites
ludja

ludja

Posted
Posted

+1

Daniel Boulud and Dorie Greenspan's, "Cafe Boulud Cookbook: French-American Recipes for the Home Cook".

Had this out from the library and was excited enough to order one for myself. It is charmingly arranged by: La Tradition (tradition French dishes), La Saison (seasonal speciialties), Le Voyage (international-inspired) and Le Potages (vegetarian).

I recently made a very nice dish from it: Lamb Chops with Lemon-Pignoli Crust. Interesting and elegant recipes that look eminently doable; it looks like a lot of effort was put into intelligently adapting these restaurant recipes for the home cook.

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

Link to comment
Share on other sites
ludja

ludja

Posted
Posted
One more:  Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison's Kitchen

Ohhhhhhh.....

I wish you hadn't mentioned this. Now I have to go out to find this book: I am a real fan of Deborah Madison's books.

Not to add *fuel* to the fire, but her book, Local Flavors also looks very good. I've taken it out of the library a few times... :smile:

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

Link to comment
Share on other sites
artisan02

artisan02

Posted
Posted
One more:  Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison's Kitchen

Ohhhhhhh.....

I wish you hadn't mentioned this. Now I have to go out to find this book: I am a real fan of Deborah Madison's books.

Not to add *fuel* to the fire, but her book, Local Flavors also looks very good. I've taken it out of the library a few times... :smile:

I already have that one. It is very good.

http://Nightstirrings.blogspot.com
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tough Cookie

Tough Cookie

Posted
Posted
I hate to lower the average number of cook books per person, I have but just one (and it was given to me as a joke).  I am a 100% food lover, as long as I don't have to cook!

Please don't take away my membership!  :sad:

I 've gotta know, what's the name of the book?

Welcome Tough Cookie. I want to know the title of your one and only too. And remember: we all started with one cookbook.

Don't laugh but it is one of the Company's Company series - Breakfasts & Brunches. I have "A Year in Provence" by Peter Mayle - that must count for half a cookbook, no? :laugh:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Marya

Marya

Posted
Posted

Thank you, thank you! I have always thought I had an embarassment of riches with my 381 cookbooks. (There would have been more but I gave away hundreds when I moved from Chicago to Alaska, and then to Oregon.) My husband rolls his eyes when he sees another box of books from Powells or Amazon, but you have been an inspiration with your thousand-plus holdings . We'll soon be moving to our newly constructed home where I have asked the builder for a 14 foot wall of bookcases in the kitchen to house dishes and cookbooks. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
mbrowley

mbrowley

Posted
Posted

Tack on another 2,000. I've moved this damn library four times and there's another move in the works for 2006: Philadelphia to San Diego. I am seriously considering a yard sale. Well, ok, it's south Philly, so a stoop sale might be more appropriate since there are no yards here. I'm at the point where moving companies actually debate whether they will charge me library rates (there's more than cookbooks, but that's all we're talking about here).

I started accumulating food books in undergraduate school and it wasn't until my mid-20's that I realized I had grown beyond "a few" or "some" into something that caused people to say, on first viewing, "My god, have you actually READ all these?"

Of course not. What's the point of having rooms full of books you've already read?

But I've read most of them and I know what's in all of them. They are in English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch and Italian (some Chinese and Hungarian, but I can't read those) and cover the gamut from proceedings of the Oxford Symposia and the Southern Foodways Alliance's publications to books on homemade beer and moonshine.

One -- John Egerton's "Southern Food" -- is in the kitchen, but that's a reading copy. After the roof and possibly the shower, the kitchen is the worst possible place in most homes for long-term storage.

The most real estate is taken up by books on fermented and preserved foods; charcuterie/sausage/scrapple, pickles, james, preserves, cheeses, beers, sugar-based things. There's a lot on European and American southern cooking. Latin cookery -- from Miami to Bogata -- holds a special interest.

Two categories I've avoided - wine books (there are just too many) and cookery pamphlets; the category's unending. They are money holes.

I used to think I had a lot of cookbooks until I met Fritz Blank, the chef at Deux Cheminees in Philadelphia. Blank lives above the restaurant and maintains a collection of about 10,000 cookbooks (but he's not an egullet member). Now I can point to my own collection and say "See? This is not pathological at all."

In 2002, I curated an exhibit for the rare books and manuscripts dept at the university of Pennsylvania that used Blank's collection as an illustration of cooking influences on his life. It's been funkily edited in its online incarnation, but you can still check it out at:

http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/chef/index.html

I've been a collector for a long time now and I've learned that book collectors are, by and large, territorial and secretive. Not the folks who have 20 or 60 books, but once we start talking hundreds, people begin to grow very protective of their collections. Blank is protective, but he allows anyone visiting his restaurant to visit the library, too. His openness as a congenial host inspired me a few years ago to open my library as well (I'd been hording these to myself). I don't let anyone borrow books, but local chefs have used the library to develop recipes, visiting writers have used it and even the staff of Philadelphia's Di Bruno Brothers cheese stores have plundered the shelves.

I'm still protective (no pens, no borrowing, no big bags), but it feels good to know that I'm not the only one using this thing. It's also not uncommon for visitors to bring a book, especially if they've written it. That's a nice touch. I thank Blank for the inspiration and hope that more of my secret-horde-minded colleagues follow suit.

Matthew

Matthew B. Rowley

Rowley's Whiskey Forge, a blog of drinks, food, and the making thereof

Author of Moonshine! (ISBN: 1579906486)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Marlene

Marlene

Posted
Posted

I've just ordered:

The Silver Palate

The Frog Commissary

Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme

yay!

Marlene

Practice. Do it over. Get it right.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Safran

Safran

Posted
Posted
I've just ordered:

The Silver Palate

The Frog Commissary

Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme

yay!

Marlene, I LOVE the SIlver Palate. And the other two books are also on my shelf and get lots of use! Good choices!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
vogelap

vogelap

Posted
Posted (edited)

I am planning to move some books around... That might give me a good opportunity to count my cookbooks because, well, I'd like to know! I know it's over 100 (like I posted before), but just HOW MUCH over, I don't know.

Edited by vogelap (log)

-drew

www.drewvogel.com

"Now I'll tell you what, there's never been a baby born, at least never one come into the Firehouse, who won't stop fussing if you stick a cherry in its face." -- Jack McDavid, Jack's Firehouse restaurant

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Smithy

Smithy

Posted
Posted

Lessee...I've given away one (count it) book some time ago, and gained at least 3 in the meantime:

The Gourmet Cookbook (what was I thinking?)

Paula Wolfert's Couscous and other Good Food from Morocco (that one's already gotten a lot of use)

The Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine (I refuse to send Mayhaw Man a check for the suggestion that cost me more money, but it is indeed a fine book)

That last book will make a good weapon if someone wants to challenge me in the kitchen.

Mm. My mother passed a couple of cookbooks on to me also, although the names escape me at the moment. Count me for a net of 4 more since my last post. Don't ask me the total. :huh:

Nancy Smith, aka "Smithy"
Host, eG Forums - nsmith@egstaff.org

Follow us on social media! Facebook; instagram.com/egulletx; twitter.com/egullet

"Every day should be filled with something delicious, because life is too short not to spoil yourself. " -- Ling (with permission)
"There comes a time in every project when you have to shoot the engineer and start production." -- author unknown

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Alex

Alex

Posted
Posted

Hi, Mags -- make it 88,460. One more arrived today and two are on the way:

St. Jacques, Fast Food My Way

Alfred Portale, Simple Pleasures

The new McGee

"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

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...