Too Many Cookbooks

I was dusting some bookshelves in my house and got ambitious enough to remove all the books to dust properly. This is a major story in itself, a male who dusts properly. But I'll leave that topic until later because I want to write something about all the cookbooks I have here. I have way too many, like so many others who like to cook. Next to the Bible, cook books may be the most common books of all. Yet most people use only a few recipes from a few of the cook books they have, probably because we tend to cook the familiar.

I bought all those cook books from bookstores and thrift stores, when every cookbook or any other kind of book someone else decided was no longer appropriate for them, costs just a couple of dollars. I often shop for books at thrift stores, like Goodwill. There is a huge selection of books in all condition of all subject matter, and it's fun to select readings by impulse rather than following the crowd and reading what every one else thinks is hot. Most books that are big sellers are not literary masterpieces, they are simply manifestations of the human habit of following the herd and pretending to like it.

Cookbooks don't follow that rule. There are cookbooks from every possible source, available and waiting for the buyer. Cook books are easier to write and appeal to so many that endless titles are published. I have many off beat cook books many of which I skim through but never select recipes from. Some are better for their curious content than for their eatable recipes. Among the more than 150 titles I have is the: an Amish cookbook (Those Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants who still live as if they are in the 18th century but who have a good reputations for baking recipes), the Thai and Danish cookbooks I received from friends, celebrity cookbooks (I like the amusing celebrity commentary, not the recipes which are probably not their own anyway), regional cookbooks (country, city or state cookbooks like The Savanna or Charleston cookbook) style cookbooks (like...cooking in one pot, in a microwave, barbecuing, sauté cooking etc. I won't allow any of those awful "healthy or diet cooking" selections in my house), Nationalistic cookbooks (The pretentious French seem to have more "French" cooking books than have any other national selection, but Italian cookbooks are my favorite), Feature cookbooks (desserts breads and meats are popular), cookbooks published by charity organizations (schools, clubs, churches, the women's league, the YMCA etc.), Instructive cookbooks (step by step for cooking novices), and Picture cookbooks (people buy them because of the lush photographs of the food or scenic areas the food represent. These books sit on coffee tables more than in a kitchen and their recipes often are never tried).

There are more types but you get the idea. Cookbooks are as varied as are the humans who write them. My favorite ones are the cookbooks of my favorite foods of my youth and life thereafter, the Cajun/Creole and the New Orleans or Louisiana cookbooks, of which I have many. I like those recipes best and use those books far more than the others.

I think most cookbooks are lightly read and used. They are warm and fuzzy books that give us the promise that we might actually use them for something tasty. Yet, they never pressure us to look at or use. Too, one never knows where the next great recipe can be found, whether in a popular cookbook or an obscure one. Whatever, don't let them gather too much dust on your bookshelves. Get cooking.....