Cookbooks

How may cookbooks do you have?  Go ahead and guess. (Tell me in the comments below).  I thought I might have about 100.  So one night I counted, it turns out there was about 180.  That  was any cookbook with a binding.  It did not include magazines, pamphlet style or thin listings of recipes.  I probably have more that are hiding in boxes or closets that I don’t remember where I put them.  Now you might ask, how did I get all these cookbooks. Family and friends have fed my habit.  I love to read cookbooks and look at the pictures of the food.  My mother and I would buy each other cookbooks each time we traveled somewhere.  I also look for cookbooks at rummage sales and used book sales.  I like the ones from the 1950s with the cocktail party menus.  But honestly how many of these do you use in a month or year?  Most people probably only use the same 5-10 cookbooks.  For the avid cooker or baker it is probably 20.  With the internet some people might not even own a cookbook.  How sad…

So I was sitting around, since with the Covid virus we can’t go anywhere, and thought I should start a blog.  Writing is not a strong skill for me but I have read that in order to improve you have to practice.  So why not combine my love of cooking and baking into a blog.  And what better way than to go through all my cookbooks.  So my intention with this blog is to take one or two cookbooks a week and make a recipe from them and tell you about it.  Did I make it as listed or did I tweak it.  Are there other recipes in the book that I like.  Do I like the chef or style of cookbook.  My plan is to make a recipe from the cookbook that I have not made before.  Also I want there to be variety in the recipes I select.  I don’t think a blog of 20 different chocolate cakes would be that interesting.  Yummy for me but boring for you.  I can only provide you with the list of ingredients and some basic directions due to copyright laws (click here for information).  I will provide plenty of pictures for you to learn from.  The hardest part for me will be picking just one recipe from each book.

Please join my cookbook journey and my thoughts on how your can turn recipes you find into something you want to make and eat.  And don’t be afraid to write in your cookbooks.  You own them.  I make notes next to the recipes if something needs to be changed or I didn’t like the taste.  I also put any favorites in the front or back of the cookbook with the page number instead of marking the pages with sticky notes that fall out eventually.

Stick with me and you might just learn a new cooking tip or recipe swap.