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Cookbook Collection Pics


pastryani

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Is there an existing thread for sharing drool-worthy pics of cookbook collections of fellow eGulleters??  You know, somewhere that people can ooo and ahh over things like custom shelving, rare editions, and/or just sheer QUANTITY. :D  Thought it might be fun.  :P

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I don't think there is, as such. Lots of photographs of cooking libraries  when incorporated into kitchens but none which are just of the books that I recall.  I'm bracing myself for an expensive months or three if everyone takes you up on this idea.  O.o

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Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

Our 2012 (Kerry Beal and me) Blog

My 2004 eG Blog

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I'll start, with quantity This was taken a little over a year ago. The books still look much like this, except there now are about ten more piled on top of the other books at the left side of the window seat, plus one more CI bound volume has joined the collection. We have a bunch more food-related books (but not cookbooks) in another room.

 

DiningRoom (1280 x 960).jpg

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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."

 

"...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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This could be dangerous as AnnaN points out.  Here goes with mine.

We have a great room with the kitchen at one end and the dinning room kinda tucked away at the other end.  I have bookshelves as part of the kitchen design and then of course I needed more space so we have the tall six shelf book case made by the kitchen cabinet people to match the style/wood/colour.  And then, of course, I ran out of space and we had this low six shelf unit built in over the heat/cool registers.  I doubles as a side board if needed.  The problem with all these shelves is adjusting the heights so the books fit without having to turn them.  Compound this with wanting to have them in some kinds of sensical order makes for an impossible situation which is why you see some of my books on end.

 

First up the kitchen books which also include the magazines I subscribe to:  BA, Fine Cooking and Food and Wine with some special editions of various others kept with the regular issued magazines.  Note the empty shelf in the second picture....trouble brewing.

Magazines by the desk.jpgMagazines and spare space.jpgMagazines and books.jpgOlder books.jpg

 

Over to the dining room and the first six shelfer we had made.

All 6 shelves in dinning room.jpg

 

On the other side of the dining room is the other size shelfer and I have taken close ups of the books.

All 6 shelves under the window.jpgShelve one.jpgShelf two.jpgShelf three.jpg

 

Then finally away in some storage area are some books I don't want to throw out just yet.  Some have been taken to the second hand store already.Books in storage.jpg

 

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 I am away from home at the present time so no bookshelves to show you. Wish there was some reasonable way to display my Kindle library but apart from taking multiple screenshots that would take forever, I have no idea how to do so. 

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Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

Our 2012 (Kerry Beal and me) Blog

My 2004 eG Blog

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34 minutes ago, Anna N said:

Wish there was some reasonable way to display my Kindle library

 

Yeah, not easy.

I have more than a couple thousand digital/digitized cookbooks.....about 3,500 or so cookbooks in all.

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~Martin :)

I just don't want to look back and think "I could have eaten that."

Unsupervised, rebellious, radical agrarian experimenter, minimalist penny-pincher, and adventurous cook. Crotchety, cantankerous, terse curmudgeon, non-conformist, and contrarian who questions everything!

The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can hunt and trap out of it!

 

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Neat!  @DiggingDogFarm

But @Okanagancook   is minutes away from costing me at least $40.  My eye fell on to One Big Table,  I downloaded a sample and I'm not sure that I want to stop reading when the sample runs out.  I just knew this topic was a bad idea.:P

 

( and yes I know there are much cheaper copies available in hardcover but I no longer have the strength to hold those suckers). 

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Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

Our 2012 (Kerry Beal and me) Blog

My 2004 eG Blog

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2 hours ago, pastryani said:

Awesome, great start @Alex!  Wow @Okanagancook - you weren't kidding about quantity!  Are they kept in any particular order?  

 

I'll take a pic of mine tomorrow and post.  @Anna N you're right - this could end up being a costly thread haha!  Lucky for me I'm totally out of shelf space! ;)

 

Me too, in theory - but I keep on looking at the Sodastream and musing about moving it to under the sink, which would free up some more space, I am pretty sure.... ;)

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3 hours ago, Tere said:

 

Me too, in theory - but I keep on looking at the Sodastream and musing about moving it to under the sink, which would free up some more space, I am pretty sure.... ;)

 

Haha I guess there's always more space if you look hard enough!! xD

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EatmyBooks tells me I have 127 cookbooks / food related books.

 

The prettiest / most used are in the kitchen island bookcase. I know I just took a photo of that but I tried to make this one a bit clearer spinewise. The series of small books to the right are all the River Cottage Handbooks, I am collecting them as they come out having been given a starter set of 10 at Christmas.

 

IMG_7120 (640x480).jpg

 

Overflow in the kitchen has smaller books. I should probably move the historical cookery to the overflow section and bring in my foraging or local cookbooks.

 

IMG_7121 (640x480).jpg

 

Overflow section in the hall aims to have more theoretical reference books and books about food. The Nigel Slater on the far right is a duplicate.

 

IMG_7118 (640x480).jpg

 

The bottom shelf of the overflow is the "Ooh Ahh" section. I found the Heston Blumenthals for a song at a local factory clothing outlet, of all places. The Thomas Kellers were a pre-emptive strike by hubby to thwart my rage when he came back with way too many Folio Society books from our local very good second hand bookshop! :D

 

IMG_7119 (640x480).jpg

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Eatyourbooks says I have 298 cookbooks.  Yikes.  I've pretty well stopped buying except when the annual awards come out then I'll have a look at what is there.  I bought a lot of books two years ago and am struggling cooking from all of them.  I need to pick a book and cook recipes from that book and move on to the next.

 

The books are arranged in some kind of order.  By cuisine:  East Indian; Spanish; Italian, Southern US, German, Great Britain; Greek......; then a lot of restaurant books are together; light cookery together and I think that is it.  The Magazines are kept in date order and most of the recipes I want to make from them are bookmarked using Eatyourbooks.  I use this feature quite a bit for marking recipes that I like to make again; not make again; or just plain make it!

 

I have trouble deciding what to make with so much choice but right now it's all about eating fresh from the garden.

 

Tere, it's interesting to see the different books you have over there in Europe.  Books we don't see on our shelves but then also familiar ones such as ad hoc at home.

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36 minutes ago, Okanagancook said:

Eatyourbooks says I have 298 cookbooks.  Yikes.  I've pretty well stopped buying except when the annual awards come out then I'll have a look at what is there.  I bought a lot of books two years ago and am struggling cooking from all of them.  I need to pick a book and cook recipes from that book and move on to the next.

 

The books are arranged in some kind of order.  By cuisine:  East Indian; Spanish; Italian, Southern US, German, Great Britain; Greek......; then a lot of restaurant books are together; light cookery together and I think that is it.  The Magazines are kept in date order and most of the recipes I want to make from them are bookmarked using Eatyourbooks.  I use this feature quite a bit for marking recipes that I like to make again; not make again; or just plain make it!

 

I have trouble deciding what to make with so much choice but right now it's all about eating fresh from the garden.

 

Tere, it's interesting to see the different books you have over there in Europe.  Books we don't see on our shelves but then also familiar ones such as ad hoc at home.

 

Delia Smith is foolproof but her older stuff sometimes needs a little more spicing. The white books you can't see the spine of next to her Winter and Summer Collection books are all three of her How to Cook books which are fantastic and turn up regularly in charity shops. Great reference for basics - if I need the proportions for bread and butter pudding custard I go there, for example. Her damson chutney is delicious.

 

Nigella Lawson writes brilliantly about food but her recipes can be a bit scatty. I've been tripped up before. Read all the way through. But she's great for when I want to make bread sauce or proper stuffing and her lacquered quail recipe is to die for. I just wouldn't try a new recipe of hers for a dinner party.

 

I've tried several Tom Kerridge recipes and they are good but goodness he uses a lot of salt. I am more judicious (but I had to cook low sodium in my teens for my grandparents so my salting preferences are quite low).

 

I go to Pru Leith when I need to remember how to do a specific technique and some of her recipes are very tasty also!

 

My favourite writer is Nigel Slater by far. Simple, tasty and divinely described. Reminds me I need to stick some of his recent cookbooks on the Amazon wishlist :)

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1 hour ago, Tere said:

 

Delia Smith is foolproof but her older stuff sometimes needs a little more spicing. The white books you can't see the spine of next to her Winter and Summer Collection books are all three of her How to Cook books which are fantastic and turn up regularly in charity shops. Great reference for basics - if I need the proportions for bread and butter pudding custard I go there, for example. Her damson chutney is delicious.

 

Nigella Lawson writes brilliantly about food but her recipes can be a bit scatty. I've been tripped up before. Read all the way through. But she's great for when I want to make bread sauce or proper stuffing and her lacquered quail recipe is to die for. I just wouldn't try a new recipe of hers for a dinner party.

 

I've tried several Tom Kerridge recipes and they are good but goodness he uses a lot of salt. I am more judicious (but I had to cook low sodium in my teens for my grandparents so my salting preferences are quite low).

 

I go to Pru Leith when I need to remember how to do a specific technique and some of her recipes are very tasty also!

 

My favourite writer is Nigel Slater by far. Simple, tasty and divinely described. Reminds me I need to stick some of his recent cookbooks on the Amazon wishlist :)

I love, love, love reading  Nigel Slater and if I never cook another damn thing I will always be right there to buy his next book.  He almost had me convinced that I should learn how to be a gardener and how to maintain a fruit orchard!   

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Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

Our 2012 (Kerry Beal and me) Blog

My 2004 eG Blog

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Here are most of mine:

 

cookbooks1 0720.jpg

 

A shelf and a half of a three-shelf, 36-inch shelf here; the basket is dog accoutrements, and the bottom shelf is assorted junk.

 

cookbooks20720.jpg

 

The other three-shelf bookcase. These live in the laundry room, because that's the only place for them. A few books are out on loan, and a few have migrated into the dining room to rest on the bookshelf there. There may be one or two on my nightstand, as I tend to read them lilke novels. There is one on the back of the couch I've been perusing.

 

I need to categorize my Kindle books, but I'm guessing I have in the neighborhood of 100 cookbooks there. The real monster, though, are the two groups of computer files -- one a documents folder of cut-and-pasted or emailed-to-me files of recipes, at least broken down by category, and the bookmarks file, also broken down by topic, of individual recipes. Plus I have probably 100-150 recipes saved in my "cookbook" on the NYT Cooking site, and another 100 or so on Food 52.

 

A lot of my cookbooks -- most of the top shelf of pic 2 -- are assorted "collection" cookbooks published by churches, organizations, etc. Lots of Jell-O and Cream of Mushroom soups in them, but I keep them because there are two or three "keepers" in each book, which I can easily find by looking for the stained and wrinkled page.

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Don't ask. Eat it.

www.kayatthekeyboard.wordpress.com

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I tend to buy cookbooks as holiday souvenirs when I can find a decent one in English, and in French if pushed. I have dar Moha's cookbook http://www.decitre.fr/livres/la-cuisine-de-moha-9782849420614.html and a coffee table French cookbook from Morocco, Flynn's Second Helpings from Ireland https://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Helpings-Further-Irish-Adventures/dp/1903464846, a wonderfully vague one from Venice, Movida from Melbourne https://www.amazon.co.uk/MoVida-Frank-Camorra-Richard-Cornish/dp/1921259396/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469039465&sr=1-1&keywords=movida, others include offerings from Austria and Japan, of course. I like doing that as it reminds me of the holiday :)

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This feels like a confessional, I've cooked from all these books! Not....much is not seen as the industrial shelf holds three rows. 

 

I've probably only cooked from 1 percent of these. 

 

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Edited by mrdecoy1970
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32 minutes ago, mrdecoy1970 said:

Sorry if that's too much to post I can delete, went a little crazy with my new phone.

 

 

wow, I could pass a lot of time just browsing your titles. You REALLY need to share with us more of your cooking exploits from this wonderful collection! Do you work through things in any particular order? Or randomly pick a book and try recipes? :)

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3 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

 

wow, I could pass a lot of time just browsing your titles. You REALLY need to share with us more of your cooking exploits from this wonderful collection! Do you work through things in any particular order? Or randomly pick a book and try recipes? :)

 

If we feel like Mexican, I grab a Bayless or Kennedy book, or French Pepin or Raymond Blanc although I find Pepin more consistent. I've honestly not cooked through 1% of these books.

Edited by mrdecoy1970 (log)
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