How Many Cookbooks Do You Have?

[southerncooker]

I love cookbooks and have close to 1400. I find lots of treasures at used book stores, thrift stores, yard sales and flea markets and also at paperbackswap.com. Need details about PBS email me.

I hardly ever pay full price for a book. Exceptions are the year I went to the LA Times Book Festival and had several autographed by cookbook authors. I also belong to a online cookbook collectors group. There are a lot of us out there. I do cook from quiet a few of my books and also use them to get ideas. We did a challenge to cook from a different book each week in 2006 and so far I've keep up. Just a few more weeks to go.

[suzyQ3]

I also belong to a online cookbook collectors group.


Southerncooker, could you please provide a link or name to this group?

[southerncooker]

SuzyQ3,
It's a yahoo group and it's called
CookbooksEtCetera
Very friendly group with members whos collections range from 50 or less to those who have in the 1,000's. If you like talking cookbooks it's a fun group.

[suzyQ3]

Originally Posted by southerncooker

SuzyQ3,
It's a yahoo group and it's called
CookbooksEtCetera
Very friendly group with members whos collections range from 50 or less to those who have in the 1,000's. If you like talking cookbooks it's a fun group.

Thanks so much. I should check it out. Yours is the second recommendation I've received for that group.

I'm curious, since I posted pics on this thread of my collection, which is about half the size of yours: How do you display them all?

[Dina]

Perhaps over 30 including cooking magazines and about 400 printouts from the internet. I'm nuts, I know.

[southerncooker]

It's not easy SuzyQ3. I have two big bookshelves in my living room, with a roll top desk between them. Not only do I have those shelves overflowing, I have them stacked to the celing on top of both those shelves and almost that high in three stacks on back top of the desk. Then I have another small shelf underneath one of my end tables. Also a rolling cart full of smaller books. In my dining room I have an old china cab. that belonged to one of my Grandmothers - that is also filled with cookbooks and they are stacked to the celing on top of it as well. Then my daughter who claims the cookie cookbooks has two wooden crates stacked to make a book case and those plus her Southern Living Christmas Cookbooks fill those and on top of them. I also have a stack that I'm using or are my newest additions on the fireplace hearth beside my chair in the living room.

One of these days I'm going to have some more shelves built from floor to celing and from wall to wall in my LR.

You should check the group out.

[Claire]

I'm right in there in the category of "I don't want to count them". Also two very large shelves full of Gourmet and Saveur mags that I keep swearing I'm going to go through and clip and throw them away, but don't have the heart to do it. Most live up in my guest room (which has a huge wall of shelves), but I keep a half dozen on my dining room sideboard: Joy of Cooking lives there, then cookbooks from whatever cuisine I'm thinking about. Maybe a half dozen of the hundreds get used regularly, I'm really not much of a recipe person. I look up recipes in 2-3 magazines or books, then take off from there. A lot of them have cultural information that I enjoy reading when I'm cooking an ethnic meal. Some have emotional ties.

[Violet]

I hope it is ok to resurrect an old thread ... I'm new here, so that is my excuse! I've only seen this for the first time! I have at least a few hundred, and almost as many cooking magazines! I love buying new cookbooks, and often get embarrassed by how many I have. We recently moved, and had help from my husband's family. I knew I'd probably get some comment on the number of cookbooks I have. Then, on Christamas Eve, we were at my husband's sister's house. She received a cookbook as a gift, so I sat down and began leafing through the book. Another sister-in-law saw me, and said "You don't need another cookbook! Then she said to someone else ' I just helped her move, and she must have 100 cookbooks!' ... all I could think of was ... good thing she only saw a portion of them! Now I know it was only said in loving teasing, but still ...

Is anyone else embarrassed by the amount they own?

A little off topic:

I won't mention the razzing I received about all of my baking supplies and how many bottles of different extracts I have ... Hmmm ... maybe I shouldn't have let them unpack my kitchen!

[Veloce]

Our cookbooks and books about food and cooking occupy one bookshelf - just under 16 linear feet of shelf space. Anything new we add to the collection means something has to go. DW gave me a copy of Anthony Bourdain's The Nasty Bits for Christmas. We made room for it by giving a friend our copy of Pierre Franey's Low-Calorie Gourmet. In addition to the bookshelf, I have complete runs of Fine Cooking and Cook's Illustrated magazines in the filing cabinet in my office.

[Benni]

I used to get embarrased whenever my family and friends commented on the huge number of cookbooks (and craft books) that I own. And then I thought 'so what', this is my hobby, I love reading the books and yes I know I will never live long enough to try all the recipes -so.

So now I ignore their comments and buy new recipe books whenever I feel like it. I figure they can donate them to a charity when I finally shuffle off.

However, I do see a granddaughter who seems to be heading the same way - so i just slip her a cook book now and then. Good to see someone keeping up the tradition.