Cookbooks – How Many Do You Own? (Part 4)

[Bombdog]

Just added 3 more:

"Professional Charcuterie: Sausage Making, Curing, Terrines, and Pates

John Kinsella

"Cooking by Hand"

Paul Bertolli

"Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery"

Jane Grigson

Damned you Ruhlman! This is your fault!

[bluechefk]

well, i just read a little deeper into this thread, and discovered that Art Culinaires count - so add another 14 for me!

[Safran]

including Nigella Lawson's Feast snapped up on sale by moi.

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maggie, I actually quite like that one. Bon choix!

[The Old Foodie]

305 for me, after a serious culling - plus a large number of pdf files and print-outs of historic cookbooks from the 14th C onwards, which I refer to probably more often than actual books, but which I guess dont count here. So just the 305 please.

Janet

[Marigene]

I have 521, down from about 3,500. Had to get rid of most of them when we moved to cut down on moving expenses.

[judiu]

I have 521, down from about 3,500. Had to get rid of most of them when we moved to cut down on moving expenses. 

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And, pray tell, where was I when you were unloading? I had over 300, but the house fire ate them all, so I've been rebuilding with blessings to all here on eGullet!

[Marigene]

I gave them to the neighbors sister and she sold most of them on e-Bay. I thought she wanted them for herself.......I could have cried!

[chromedome]

I was poking through a stack of 1970's-era cake decorating booklets at my wife's work when I came across the 1967 Pillsbury bake-off winners book. It's a paper thingie about the size of an Avon catalogue, and for $1 I just had to have it. The back cover alone cracks me up!

"Much of a marriage happens in the kitchen. That little restaurant...His laughable attempts to duplicate a secret sauce...remeniscences of first meetings. There's romance in a kitchen and it's a wise gal who pursues it through the countless 'discoveries'...new and remembered in America's foremost culinary collection...The Pillsbury Family Cookbook."

The contents include some of the most disgustingly retro-vile dishes you can imagine. Bachelor's Bake, anyone? Mashed potato flakes, spam, processed cheese, barbecue sauce and chicken gravy...all your favourites in one dish! And how about Party Pink Pie for dessert? Pillsbury icing, red food colouring, sour cream, and a can of cherry pie filling all lovingly poured into a pre-baked Pillsbury pie shell and refrigerated until the Tupperware party. I mean, until set.

I could go on, but it's almost lunch time and I'm putting myself off...

[judiu]

I gave them to the neighbors sister and she sold most of them on e-Bay. I thought she wanted them for herself.......I could have cried! 

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Hurmph! Bloody cow! (Sorry, U.K. 'ers and Canadians) er, ah, her, not you, Marigene!

And now, thanks to Suzielightning (3) and bluechefk (1), I now have 4 more in the collection. Thanks to both of y'all!

Edited to add new books...

Edited August 23, 2006 by judiu (log)

[Gruzia]

not sure what my exact count is, probably somewhere in the fifties, but had to share my recent find - Gold Medal Flour Cookbook, published in 1908! I can't believe it survived and i can't believe I bought it for $3.50!

[annachan]

not sure what my exact count is, probably somewhere in the fifties, but had to share my recent find - Gold Medal Flour Cookbook, published in 1908!  I can't believe it survived and i can't believe I bought it for $3.50!

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What a great find! I'm a sucker for those old cookbooks. $3.50 is a hard bargain to beat!

[bluechefk]

please add one more for me, too - the copy of 'the occasional vegetarian' that i'd ordered ages ago (& completely forgotten about) just arrived!

[bluechefk]

and another 4 for me, please - just got back from the annual library used book sale, where i found rocco dispirito's 'flavor', nina simonds 'spices of life', the jamisons' 'american home cooking', and the aquavit cookbooks - all for $2 each!! i'm giddy with excitement

[Kerry Beal]

Add 4 more for me. Book Warehouse 25% off which included their dollar books.

Antonio Carluccio - Passion for Pasta

The Ultimate Frozen Dessert Book

Wolfgang Puck

Steak, Chops, Roasts and Ribs - Cook's Illustrated

[Velma]

I'm a few years late adding my response to this but, I'm new! I would say about 300 with most of them concentrated in the baking area. The Village Baker by Joe Ortiz is on the way and will be the next to join the collection

[maggiethecat]

Your Calculatrix found her calculator under a pile of origami cranes, and we're up to a very pretty number: 120,120.

[snowangel]

Oh, add 9 of them that I didn't even know I had. (hidden in one of the five boxes I didn't unpack when we moved; bonus was that I found the almost finished knit shawl that I had been working on -- a spiderwebby silk/mohair blend -- that was use to keep the books from rolling around in the box.)

One of the 9 includes the Ladies Home Cookbook, circa 1906. It includes not only nebulous recipes, but also methods for keep the outhouse smelling clean, how to avoid typhoid, and what to do with a crabby and teething child.

[chiantiglace]

I can only contribute about 34, I like to read mine cover to cover before moving on to the next one.

Sometimes I dont even buy them, I just sit in a Barnes and Noble for 2 and 1/2 hours at a time charging through books. I know its wrong, but I am but a poor student.

[kristin_71]

I figured out a way to get French Laundry Cookbook! Hee! I am studying to be a paralegal and a friend in three of my classes has had surgery and cannot take notes. So through the University I have a contract to take notes, and get reimbursed with Barnes and Noble gift certificates! $25 for each class so I am basically making $75 a week for doing what I am supposed to be doing. HA! What the University doesn't know is they are aiding and abeiting my cookbook habbit.

[chiantiglace]

I want to take some notes, dammit!

[kristin_71]

Found out that if I type the notes and email them I get a $50 gift certificate for each class. I already picked up Bouchon Cookbook which is just gorgeous. So once I have picked up French Laundry Cookbook which will be next week, I need suggestions as to what else I should get? I am not a professional, my skills are decent.(Jacques Pepin's book on technique has been suggested to me and I will pick it up, maybe this weekend.) Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[heyjude]

One of my best hauls ever, but not to be duplicated in the real world. A good friend who is downsizing let me have first choice from her sizeable collection. So, I have 55 new books. I'm really not a greedy person. I just act like one sometimes. You can see some of my collection in Henry and Lorna's fabulous blog.

[rjwong]

Add one title:

Baking: from my home to yours / by Dorie Greenspan

[ninetofive]

Judy, that is one stunning cookbook collection! How long has it taken you to amass this? And I smiled when I read the chefs who visit go for the Time Life/Good Cook books. Same here, although they stick out in my puny (by comparison) cookbook library.

Tonight I added Greenspan's new baking book to my collection. I was sold by the cake on the cover alone: when I saw her name on the cover, all the sweeter. :-)

[heyjude]

The short answer is 40 years. The long is that my mother had 2 cookbooks and my grandmother none and I had never really looked at one until I left home. My then boyfriend (now husband of 39+ years) was sent off by his mother with the paperback James Beard Cookbook. I still have it. Thousands more have joined it in various ways. We lived for a couple years right across the street from The Strand and I worked at Powell's in Portland. Fabulous discounts. Now, of course, I work for Kim Rickett's Book Events doing the Cooks and Books Visiting Chef Series which is incredibly fun and I end up with signed copies of books by the best of the best. Cookbook authors are nice people. I will wait until November for my copy of Dorie Greenspan's latest when we hold her event at Seattle's much-loved Macrina Bakery. The obsession has never let up and my kids have caught it a bit.