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Cookbooks – How Many Do You Own? (Part 1)


maggiethecat

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We are one decent collection away from 40,000. Wow.

And that's 7.54 miles.

Welcome to eGullet, OPJK. You've pushed the total to 39, 817.

Margaret McArthur

"Take it easy, but take it."

Studs Terkel

1912-2008

A sensational tennis blog from freakyfrites

margaretmcarthur.com

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181. 182 if you count all of the annual bound editions of Cook's Illustrated as one book. 183 if you count My Year of Meats. I think I'll stop buying at 200. (Yeah, right.)

"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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Somewhere between 363 (which is what it was when I reorganised the kitchen shelves last spring) and four hundred. I've bought a few more since the reorg, and there are also some oddities (historical and/or literary cookbooks) that don't live in the kitchen.

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Goodness gracious! Welcome, newcomers, and thank all of you for your numbers. Not only did we cross the 40,000 mark, we hit 41,000.

41, 406. Or:7.84 miles.

Margaret McArthur

"Take it easy, but take it."

Studs Terkel

1912-2008

A sensational tennis blog from freakyfrites

margaretmcarthur.com

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The one cookbook I recommend to everyone getting started is The New York Times Cookbook. Every single recipe I've tried is excellent and simple and perfect. It's a good basic starter cookbook, and I use it more than any other. The prettiest cookbook I have is The French Laundry Cookbook.

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A variant question is how many of each genre do you own? I'd say I have more Asian cuisine books and vegetarian or vegetable-focused books than anything else. By Asian, I mean anything from Russian to Indian to the traditional Eastern stuff, to Southeast Asian cooking.

Soba

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I'd say I have more Asian cuisine books and vegetarian or vegetable-focused books than anything else.

Soba, share the veg-focused ones--which are your favorite? do you use Tetsuya's?

Alcohol is a misunderstood vitamin.

P.G. Wodehouse

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Leaving any actual series, the largest theme in my collection is breakfast. Overall, I try to limit myself to themes/cuisines/techniques that I don't already have anything about. To spend less, in theory. Doesn't work very well for that but it makes for a wonderful variety.

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41,722.

I gave the "favorite cookbook" question some thought and realize that I probably don't use one more than another. A new cookbook, like "Zuni Cafe" (Christmas present) or "Way to Cook" (anniversary) will get a good workout for awhile, just to get the flavor of the book and be insprired by new recipes.

But, otherwise: I'll pull out a specific cookbook according to what's on hand, or what I want to cook. The popover recipe from "Joy," Madhur Jaffrey for Indian, "Kitchen Sessions" for caramel-lime ice cream....

Or I'll simply pull a random stack from the shelf and look for inspiration.

Margaret McArthur

"Take it easy, but take it."

Studs Terkel

1912-2008

A sensational tennis blog from freakyfrites

margaretmcarthur.com

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It did seem to me that the more cookbooks I accumulated the less I actually used them for recipes, because, of course, you internalize so much. Hard to recall whether this was always true, but I would much rather read a beautifully written book that tells me something about food than a beautifully done book that tells me how to prepare food.

Arthur Johnson, aka "fresco"
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