So Many Cookbooks

Do you notice how big the cookbook section of a bookstore is when you go to buy books? I think there may be as many cook books for sale as any other type of book sold. Surely, most homes have many cook books, even those that have non readers or non cooks living in them. Almost everybody buys, collects and finds them interesting. We sometimes even display them as a group in the kitchen on their own bookshelves. One thing we most often do not do is use them. There might be one or a few recipes we like in a particular cookbook, but the rest are paid little attention to, because it's impossible to cook all the recipes in a cook book and most people cook the same things over and over anyway.

There are many kinds of cook books. The most famous in America is probably "The Joy of Cooking" or the "James Beard Cook Book". They are extensive, usable and practical. Any skilled home cook in the U.S. has one or both of those two. One type of cookbook in the U.S. is the glitzy, expensive, coffee table cook book we never use but like to display and admire. Most of the recipes are too elaborate or unappealing for the home cook, but the coffee table cookbook appeals to the visual appetite, not the stomach.

How about those regional cook books? I have seen enough of "Cooking Greek" or "the Wok Cook Book" to know that genre only turns my stomach, not fills it. There are some good regional cook books though. It's the local ones that appeal to the skills and tastes of the local inhabitants that we buy and use often. "Down in the Parish", for example, is a cook book from St. Bernard Parish next to me...the same one in which every home there was submerged in the waters of Hurricane Katrina, is a treasure of great local recipes that are done right.

Another kind of cook book is the celebrity cookbook. Those famous people or famed TV chefs put out cook books mostly because they a make money. people translate their like of the celebrity to a like and purchase of the cook book. They rarely cook any recipes in them. I find little of anything of value in any of them and own none of those. They are printed only to cash in on the name of the author.

I am not sure how many cook books I have, but it has to be at least 50. Thrift stores have a trove of them for sale every day for a dollar or two each. Included in the cache' of cookbooks at those Goodwill stores are local cook books that compose another type, the special interest cookbook. In those stores one can find things like "Cooking with Chocolate" or "Breads" or one of the kinds of cook books that I most like, the institutional cook book.

One of the best institutional cook books I have is a book first published in the early 60's by my electric company, The Energy Cook Book. That one is huge and has about every New Orleans recipe one would want to cook, in the style the home cook uses when turning on the oven or range top. I use it often. Then there are the wacky regional cookbooks that inhabit those thrift stores and book stores alike. How about the " Prince of peace Lutheran Church Family Cook Book" or the "The Bayou Knights of Columbus Cook Book" as examples. No doubt the school, church or other group or institution publishes those as a fund raising and unifying tactic (members feel more a part of the organization when their recipes are published in its cook book). The person who would buy that kind of cook book might do so because he or she noticed one or two good recipes when perusing the book, or buy it because Aunt Edna is a contributing member and expects all her relatives to buy it (or be cut out of the will).

There are many other kinds of cook books out there, but I better stop writing about the subject before I upset your stomach and make eating tonight unappealing...and I wanted to mention more about the recipes inside the books too. I save that subject for another day.