Building a Cookbook Library
I collect cookbooks.
I know I could look-up just about any recipe online, but I can't give up my cookbooks. I love sitting down with a stack of cookbooks and planning a holiday meal or dinner party. Sometimes, if I'm feeling bored or anxious, I'll pull a favorite cookbook off the shelf and just read it. I love the photos. I love to daydream about making the dishes. Sometimes they inspire me so much I get up and bake something.To me, cookbooks are so much better than cooking blogs. Is it just me or have they gotten impossible to navigate? First there's the pop-up ads that always seem to crash the website at the very moment I'm rushing to check how long the brownies are supposed to bake. By the time I reload the website, I have burnt bricks of chocolate.
I also hate the long, drawn-out stories before I get to the actual recipe. Don't get me wrong. I love a good story behind a recipe. Heck, when I share my recipes, I usually give you a story. What I hate about most food blogs though is that the story is usually so peppered with keywords to ensure it's SEO status that it no longer makes sense.
To alleviate some of this frustration, I have just started sticking to my cookbooks. 'If my cookbook doesn't have it, maybe I don't need to make it.' has become my motto. Honestly, that just about sums up my view of the internet and the state of the world anymore. Who needs to add any extra irritations to their life in the form of pop-up ads? Who wants so many choices that they become frozen and unable to make dinner because they are simply too overwhelmed by the sheer number of sheet pan chicken recipes they can make? Or, more likely, have spent so long looking up recipes that they run out of time to actually make anything? (Guilty as charged.) I'm simplifying my life and I'll just pull a cookbook off the shelf and I'm none the worse for it. I have a big enough collection to be able to source a few different versions of a recipe, and I'm told I'm a pretty darn good cook too.
So, in that vein, I thought I would share some of the cookbooks I use the most consistently. The ones that have been workhorses for me, that I can depend on good getting good results from every time. The ones that have scribbled notes about how long my own oven takes to bake something or an ingredient I've added or subtracted, The ones with splashes of sauces and slightly rippled papers. The ones I imagine my daughter will inherit one day and treasure because my handwriting is on the pages and she will be able to get a taste of her childhood if she uses the recipes.
I do still use cookbooks, even though I am not exactly precise when it comes to following recipes. All my cookbooks, like yours, have notes and adjustments written in them. If I am going to make something that's online, I actually write the recipe down or print it off, and then I put it in my big cooking notebook. It's kind of a jumble, to be honest. I have a book my mom gave me that is a church collection, the Lutheran Ladies' Family Favourites and it's kind of gross when it comes to dinner food, but the baked goods cannot be beat! (I have written about it before, but some of the recipes are things like Vera's Weiner Pie, and there is an entire section of jellied salad with meat in it, you get the idea). I do love looking through cookbooks, it's very soothing.
ReplyDeleteI keep a binder of recipes I download and print too. But I usually only print them out if we loved the recipe. Your Lutheran Ladies cookbook sounds amazing on so many levels!
DeleteLaura, your photos seriously made me hungry! Pizza, asparagus and cinnamon rolls - yes please! I'm not much of a cook, but when I do cook, I have a book of recipes from my mother-in-law, all tried and true. And I have a Betty Crocker cookbook which was a wedding gift.
ReplyDeleteHow sweet that your MIL gave you a cookbook!
DeleteI love cookbooks, which is a little ironic since I hardly ever cook. I love the pictures and creative layouts, and will buy them based on this. My favorite is What Katie Ate, it's gorgeous, and I have never made anything in it. The two that get used the most are The King Arthur Baking Companion and America's Test Kitchen. They are both great for basic recipes and have almost everything you need.
ReplyDeleteI love the King Arthur Recipes. I'll have to get the book.
DeleteI adore cookbooks. I have a small library of them and I usually have at least a couple checked out from the public library. Perhaps part of it is the tactile nature of a book, the aesthetics. And the chance to pore over the book without distraction and without hurry. I especially love a cookbook filled with stories and good photos (or other art -- The New Laurel's Kitchen has lovely woodcuts). I saw Ruth Reichl's My Kitchen Year on your shelf -- I loved that one (and her memoirs, too). Another one that I enjoyed reading was The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite reference cookbook is The New Best Recipe.
If I do find a recipe online that I want to try (and I agree with you 100% about most cooking blogs. It's so irritating!), I usually print it out (I love the printable option on cooking blogs).
I guess the funny thing about all of this is that although I like to try new recipes, most of the time that I cook, I just make things up (not when baking, then I like to use a recipe).
What a fun post, Laura. Thanks for sharing.
I loved My Kitchen Year! And the recipes in it are great too. Thanks for the other recommendations. I'll check them out.
DeleteI, too, collected many cookbooks but moving from a house to apartment meant downsizing. I have kept all my M.F.K. Fisher books, Marion Cinningham's The Breakfast Book, continues to be my go-to for quick breads, and any thing breakfast, The Best of Bridge (early books, especially the first) with the Chicken or Crab Crepes as my go to party dish, all of the Whitewater Cook books, and of course, Betty Crockers' International Cookbook.
ReplyDeleteI love MFK Fisher and The Breakfast Book. I'll have to check-out the others you mentioned.
DeleteWhen my grown daughters come to me for a recipe from our past there is only one or two cookbooks, I have to look at to get it for them. I gave each of my girls a Betty Crocker cook book when they set out for their own kitchen. That book has gotten me through some tough times.
ReplyDeleteThe Betty Crocker cookbook seems to be favorite of everyone here and I don't own one! I'm going to need to get it. Maybe I can steal my mom's copy!
DeleteBetty Crocker has been in my kitchen since my MIL gave it to me about 25 years ago. I also love that Barefoot Contessa book. I have a ton of printed recipes and I agree with you about recipe sites. It can all be too much.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like I HAVE to get the Betty Crocker cookbook! And the Barefoot Contessa is the best.
DeleteThis is my sign!! I've been meaning to get into baking more things other than fudgy brownies, lol. I was debating whether to just look online or find a cookbook I can scribble on; but your struggle with the introductions to meet the SEO "requirements" is something I 100% relate to. So, thanks! I'm taking a trip to my local bookstore this week, lol!
ReplyDeleteEnjoy spending a few hours in the cookbook section of the bookstore. Glad this post inspired you to bake more. It's a good hobby!
DeleteI have around a dozen cookery books which I literally haven't opened in years - the last time was probably when we emptied the book-shelf in order to move it out of the way of the carpet-fitters! They're the book equivalent of the too-small favourite jeans one keeps because one hopes to fit back into them one day. Aspirational but completely unrealistic. I've never been a keen cook, and probably never will be, but at least if I've got the books there's still an outside chance!
ReplyDeleteMy one scribbled on, wrinkly paged, flour smeared classic is 'Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course'. She was tremendously popular on UK TV in the 80's - to the extent that supermarkets would regularly sell out of certain ingredients (like cranberries) after she had featured them in a recipe on one of her cookery shows. The Complete Cookery Course famously featured instructions on 'how to boil an egg', and it came to University with me for that very reason!
I recommend revisiting the cookbooks! I use my cookbooks for inspiration other than cooking. I've found color palettes and styling ideas for photographs in cookbooks.
DeleteDue to limited space, I only have one cookbook and it's a collection of family recipes that my mother gathered and put together several years ago. I've never had a lot of fancy cookbooks, but when I did have them around, my favorites were always church cookbooks because the recipes were usually pretty easy and also tasty. My favorite is one that my mom bought for me 40 or more years ago that was put out by the Columbus Ohio Junior League. It had wonderful recipes but fell apart during a move years ago. I salvaged what pages I could.
ReplyDeleteI agree about the popups and long details on food blogs, but I also like reading the comments from people who have actually made the recipe and what adjustments they've made.
The comments can be helpful but I also find them to crazy. I like the ones where they tell you the recipe is awful then proceed to write about the adjustments they made..."I didn't have any steak so I used tuna instead and this recipe tasted like fish!" Ha!
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