What does your cookbook collection look like?

Is that the only one you have?

I like that setup. Wish I had something like that in the kitchen where I could keep everything

I have no clue where I'm going to put them now. Probably wind up in a bedroom closet collecting dust

Yes

The best thing you can do if you want to pick up a lot of old cookbooks is start going to garage sales. I did this for about 30 years and accumulated a couple thousand books, mostly on Louisiana food. Some are worn, but that didn't really bother me.



Last time I posted this I got criticized for owning "Fishing for Dummies". It's true, I can't fish worth a damn.

I had been storing mine in old music storage cabinet and I decided to clear that out so I could free up some space for all the baking supplies since those are so rarely used and are cluttering up the pantry.

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Notice at the top left they have a copy of Cane River Cuisine.

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Can you tell me a little more about this? I'm not familiar with that book

I got gifted Julia Child's 2 book set many years ago. I also have the two "Talk About Good" cookbooks and at least several others of varying importance in my small collection.

And there you have it. I hardly ever open my cookbooks anymore. I Google recipes, or go to sites like Epicurious, Bon Appetit, Pioneer Woman.

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And there you have it. I hardly ever open my cookbooks anymore. I Google recipes, or go to sites like Epicurious, Bon Appetit, Pioneer Woman.

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Good cookbooks are worth their weight in gold: the good ones are much more than recipes. With a quality cookbook, you get an author's point of view, some decent narrative content, and a broader view than just googling "Recipe for X ingredient". Plus, with physical books, you can open three or four or five simultaneously and compare very quickly the variations on a theme....try that with an iPad, you'll go blind flipping back and forth. I do buy electronic cookbook: often, they're dupes of books I own in paper format and want to have when I travel. Pretty much the only physical books I still buy and keep are cookbooks, though. (Fiction & casual nonfiction are most often e-books.)

My collection is of a fixed size: three substantial Ikea stainless steel shelving units on one wall of my kitchen/dining area, about 28 linear feet of cookbooks. They are immediately at hand, easily put back on the shelf, and post-it flagged/annotated, and otherwise well-used. I say fixed size b/c otherwise, my house would be overrun w/books. I buy a stack, figure out what's worth keeping, then sell what I don't want to keep....something has to come out of the collection before something else goes in. So I have a slush pile of about 8 linear feet of tryouts & another stack of "must go".

Used cookbooks are a wonderful way to expand a collection; I generally buy hardback titles in nearly new condition for $8/ea.