Cookbook Inventory
I do a lot of writing about cooking and recipes. Although I certainly mention cookbooks throughout the You Are What You Eat series of posts, I thought it might be worthwhile to provide the full list of cookbooks that I currently use all in one place.
1. First and foremost, I have a binder of recipes I have collected. This originally held all the recipes my mother and sister assembled for me, but it quickly grew to include recipes from Eating Well magazine or other sources that I enjoyed. The binder has grown so much that I actually split desserts, baking and holiday foods off into a separate binder last year.
2. Closely related, I have my infamous red folder of recipes that I clipped out of somewhere to make later. These are usually but hardly exclusively from Eating Well magazine. Recipes that do get made from this folder either are immediately discarded or are transferred to the binder depending on how well they go.
3. Moving on to actual cookbooks, early in our relationship M got me a copy of the Moosewood Restaurant Favorites: The 250 Most-Requested, Naturally Delicious Recipes from One of America's Best-Loved Restaurants cookbook. This is not the original Moosewood Cookbook, which M happens to have a copy of and I am mostly not impressed by. This one is from the Moosewood Collective and is by far my most used cookbook. I have made roughly 80% of the meals in that book at least once, or maybe more.
4. My sister got me a copy of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: Recipes and Wisdom from an Obsessive Home Cook (aka, the first Smitten Kitchen cookbook) some time after she helped me host Supper Club the first time. She's been a big fan of Smitten Kitchen since before there even was a cookbook. I use this one in fits and starts. There are a lot of good recipes in there and definitely still some things I haven't tried yet.
5. Another gift from my sister was my copy of 660 Curries. A recipe from that cookbook featured in the same Supper Club, although I don't recall if I owned it before or after that. Pre-pandemic when I had easy access to assorted Indian goods I hit this cookbook frequently. During the pandemic, with M's desire to avoid going into stores we've mostly used up our more unusual Indian spices and are on pause. M's all-time favorite recipe comes from this book, so we'll always keep it for that alone.
6. Apparently I never buy cookbooks, because the Bread Bible was also a gift, I think from my sister but possibly from my mother. This book is heavy, authoritative, and more than a little intimidating. I hit it a little during my 2017 resolution to make more bread and off and on since then. Like everyone else, I baked a little more during the first year of the pandemic and tapped this then.
7. M gave me a copy of Feast: Food of the Islamic World for a birthday a few years ago. Much like the Bread Bible, it feels very heavy and authoritative and more than a little intimidating. I've made a few things from it, but most of the recipes either involve lamb, which I no longer eat, or take 6 hours of meticulous effort to make, which isn't an everyday occurrence for me.
8. My mother-in-law gave me a copy of Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream Desserts for Christmas in 2019. We've made some good stuff out of it, and there's plenty more to try.
9. Building on past successes, my mother-in-law then gave me copy of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home, which is actually the first of the two Jeni's books chronologically. I've only had it a few months as of this writing, but both flavors we've made it from it were great, and the Goat Cheese Ice Cream with Roasted Red Cherries was the best one we've made so far.
10. Finally, we reach a cookbook that I actually bought! For my very first Supper Club I borrowed a copy of Tapas: Over 70 Authentic Spanish Snacks and Appetizers. That went really well, so I snagged a copy of the book for myself. I mostly use it for entertaining, but there are a few dishes in there that I actually put into the binder for easy access.
11. My mother-in-law also gave me a copy of Vegan on the Go for Christmas in 2019. I have made very little from this. Most of it doesn't interest me, not because it's vegan but just because it doesn't seem to have much flavor.
12. After we got an Instant Pot, I either got as a gift or purchased (I don't recall which) a copy of Hip Pressure Cooking: Fast, Fresh, and Flavorful. I tried out quite a few recipes after I got it, but most of them either weren't very good, or were very complicated, thereby missing the point of using an Instant Pot. It's been relegated to a shelf.
13. Another gift from my sister was Slow Cooker for Dummies. It was kind of a joke gift when I asked if there were any great slow cooker cookbooks, but I did make some things from it. A lot of the recipes didn't much appeal, and many more were red meat.
14. One more gift from my sister when I first expressed interest in baking (prior to 2017 and the Bread Bible) was Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking. It did not, alas, revolutionize home baking. I tried a few things from it but the cookbook just isn't very good.
15. I have never made anything out of the last cookbook that I own, but I have read it cover to cover. The cookbook in question is Dirt Candy: A Cookbook: Flavor-Forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant. It's a comic book with recipes that I learned about when visiting Stephy in Memphis back in 2015; M gave me a copy as a gift. The comics tell the story of the titular restaurant and the restaurant industry in general. The recipes are mostly pretty complicated looking, and I've not tried even one of them.
Breaking that down:
- Gifts from my sister: 6
- Gifts from M: 3
- Gifts from my mother-in-law: 3
- Me: 2 (if you count the red folder separate from the binder, anyway)
- Uncertain: 1
I could probably ditch cookbooks 11-14 if I needed to clear space, but hope springs eternal!
I should note that M also owns at least as many cookbooks as I do, but the only one that I've ever used is the Weight Watchers Essential Freestyle Cookbook , which has a few interesting things in it. I should really page through some of her other cookbooks at some point!
1. First and foremost, I have a binder of recipes I have collected. This originally held all the recipes my mother and sister assembled for me, but it quickly grew to include recipes from Eating Well magazine or other sources that I enjoyed. The binder has grown so much that I actually split desserts, baking and holiday foods off into a separate binder last year.
2. Closely related, I have my infamous red folder of recipes that I clipped out of somewhere to make later. These are usually but hardly exclusively from Eating Well magazine. Recipes that do get made from this folder either are immediately discarded or are transferred to the binder depending on how well they go.
3. Moving on to actual cookbooks, early in our relationship M got me a copy of the Moosewood Restaurant Favorites: The 250 Most-Requested, Naturally Delicious Recipes from One of America's Best-Loved Restaurants cookbook. This is not the original Moosewood Cookbook, which M happens to have a copy of and I am mostly not impressed by. This one is from the Moosewood Collective and is by far my most used cookbook. I have made roughly 80% of the meals in that book at least once, or maybe more.
4. My sister got me a copy of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: Recipes and Wisdom from an Obsessive Home Cook (aka, the first Smitten Kitchen cookbook) some time after she helped me host Supper Club the first time. She's been a big fan of Smitten Kitchen since before there even was a cookbook. I use this one in fits and starts. There are a lot of good recipes in there and definitely still some things I haven't tried yet.
5. Another gift from my sister was my copy of 660 Curries. A recipe from that cookbook featured in the same Supper Club, although I don't recall if I owned it before or after that. Pre-pandemic when I had easy access to assorted Indian goods I hit this cookbook frequently. During the pandemic, with M's desire to avoid going into stores we've mostly used up our more unusual Indian spices and are on pause. M's all-time favorite recipe comes from this book, so we'll always keep it for that alone.
6. Apparently I never buy cookbooks, because the Bread Bible was also a gift, I think from my sister but possibly from my mother. This book is heavy, authoritative, and more than a little intimidating. I hit it a little during my 2017 resolution to make more bread and off and on since then. Like everyone else, I baked a little more during the first year of the pandemic and tapped this then.
7. M gave me a copy of Feast: Food of the Islamic World for a birthday a few years ago. Much like the Bread Bible, it feels very heavy and authoritative and more than a little intimidating. I've made a few things from it, but most of the recipes either involve lamb, which I no longer eat, or take 6 hours of meticulous effort to make, which isn't an everyday occurrence for me.
8. My mother-in-law gave me a copy of Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream Desserts for Christmas in 2019. We've made some good stuff out of it, and there's plenty more to try.
9. Building on past successes, my mother-in-law then gave me copy of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home, which is actually the first of the two Jeni's books chronologically. I've only had it a few months as of this writing, but both flavors we've made it from it were great, and the Goat Cheese Ice Cream with Roasted Red Cherries was the best one we've made so far.
10. Finally, we reach a cookbook that I actually bought! For my very first Supper Club I borrowed a copy of Tapas: Over 70 Authentic Spanish Snacks and Appetizers. That went really well, so I snagged a copy of the book for myself. I mostly use it for entertaining, but there are a few dishes in there that I actually put into the binder for easy access.
11. My mother-in-law also gave me a copy of Vegan on the Go for Christmas in 2019. I have made very little from this. Most of it doesn't interest me, not because it's vegan but just because it doesn't seem to have much flavor.
12. After we got an Instant Pot, I either got as a gift or purchased (I don't recall which) a copy of Hip Pressure Cooking: Fast, Fresh, and Flavorful. I tried out quite a few recipes after I got it, but most of them either weren't very good, or were very complicated, thereby missing the point of using an Instant Pot. It's been relegated to a shelf.
13. Another gift from my sister was Slow Cooker for Dummies. It was kind of a joke gift when I asked if there were any great slow cooker cookbooks, but I did make some things from it. A lot of the recipes didn't much appeal, and many more were red meat.
14. One more gift from my sister when I first expressed interest in baking (prior to 2017 and the Bread Bible) was Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking. It did not, alas, revolutionize home baking. I tried a few things from it but the cookbook just isn't very good.
15. I have never made anything out of the last cookbook that I own, but I have read it cover to cover. The cookbook in question is Dirt Candy: A Cookbook: Flavor-Forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant. It's a comic book with recipes that I learned about when visiting Stephy in Memphis back in 2015; M gave me a copy as a gift. The comics tell the story of the titular restaurant and the restaurant industry in general. The recipes are mostly pretty complicated looking, and I've not tried even one of them.
Breaking that down:
- Gifts from my sister: 6
- Gifts from M: 3
- Gifts from my mother-in-law: 3
- Me: 2 (if you count the red folder separate from the binder, anyway)
- Uncertain: 1
I could probably ditch cookbooks 11-14 if I needed to clear space, but hope springs eternal!
I should note that M also owns at least as many cookbooks as I do, but the only one that I've ever used is the Weight Watchers Essential Freestyle Cookbook , which has a few interesting things in it. I should really page through some of her other cookbooks at some point!