Cookbook Purge

We're moving house in a few weeks. This will be our 16th move and I believe I can say with a certain amount of authority it doesn't get any easier. Nonetheless, we are viewing this chore positively, as an opportunity to pare down, lighten up, downsize.

That's what we tell ourselves anyway. In reality when I look at the amount of stuff we'll be giving and/or throwing away I can't help but feel we really haven't risen to the occasion. Cookbooks, for instance. I have a stack of just 15 giveaways -- out of hundreds. Logic tells me that cookbooks should be like clothes - if they haven't seen the light of day in more than a year they're out the door. Given the amount of cooking I do (much less than when I wasn't writing about food, ironically enough) there's no way in Hades I could use all of my books in a year. Yet for whatever reason I can't bear to part with most of them.

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to list the titles now sitting on our dining room table, ready to find new homes with friends or in a trash can. I don't dislike any of these books; my tossing them out is not a commentary on either their authors or their content. I only know I won't miss them. Many fellow food bloggers have written about their favorite cookbooks. Here's a list of of ones that I can do without:

Baking in America and Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts    I used to bake a lot, but now my cake pans lie unused, my cookie sheets bereft. I use the oven more for warming plates than I do for making anything sweet. I bought the first book a couple years ago, and I've only cracked it a couple times, never used it once. My mom gave me Heatter's book when I was at uni. It's well-used, and I topped off some memorable meals with its creations. But I'm not sentimental. I loved it then, but I couldn't care less about it now. Out it goes.

If I do get the urge to bake I've got this book, which is probably one of the most overlooked baking tomes out there, perhaps because its author died much too young some years ago. I've made countless desserts from it - cakes, cookies, pies, tarts, compotes, puddings, you name it - and they've all been of 'that's the best I've ever tasted' quality. It's all the baking book I need. But I've also got this one just in case I want to whip up something sweetly exotic.

The Minimalist Cooks at Home    Who doesn't love Mark Bittman's columns in the New York Times Wednesday Dining Section? I always read them but I rarely cook from them. Same with this book. Buh-bye.

The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook    This might be the first cookbook I ever owned. It's mammoth, a sort of Chinese cooking newbie's bible. I never took to it, preferring instead Kenneth Lo's Encyclopedia of Chinese Cooking (which I rarely cook from now but do use for reference). We eat a fair amount of Chinese around here and these days I'm mostly using two Sichuan cookbooks. The latter is relatively unknown, but its recipes are quite authentic (if confusingly written). It was given to me by my future mother-in-law shortly after Dave and I returned to the US from Chengdu, where we taught English in the 80s - a very good omen for future in-law relations, I think.

Kitchen Conversations    I like the idea of this book: recipes accompanied by discussions of how different flavors and ingredients work together, and input from a sommelier (the author's son) on pairing wine with the dishes. When we moved to the San Fran Bay Area in 1990 I bought the author's first book and cooked from it extensively - like, cover to cover - and I still think it's fantastic. But I just couldn't get that excited about this one.

Simply Tuscan, Food of Southern Italy, Italian Farmhouse Cookbook     My bookshelves hold almost as many Italian as Asian cookbooks, so I probably should have forced myself to part with more than three. These have sat untouched for too many years. My go-to for Italian (besides, of course, Marcella Hazan) is anything by Lynne Rosetto Kaspar, whom many readers (in the US, at least) know from NPR's Splendid Table. I was cooking from her books before she became a radio star; The Italian Country Table is probably the most oil and sauce-splattered book in my entire collection, and The Splendid Table (about Emilia-Romagna, not the radio show of the same name) combines history and recipes to great effect. 

Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin and The Paris Cookbook    Though I loved Loomis' memoir of living and cooking in a French town my affection for a few other French or French-ish cookbooks left little room in my kitchen for her cookbook. It looks like a good one, but I only cook so much French; I know I'll never get to it. As for The Paris Cookbook well, what can I say? I've never been to the City of Lights (gasp! yes, it's true) and many of the recipes are just too rarified for either my palate or my humble kitchen.

Rustic European Breads From Your Bread Machine     What was I thinking? I've never baked bread. And I don't even own a bread machine. (But I'm hanging onto a couple other bread books. You know, just in case.)

Paula Wolfert's World of Foods     Wolfert is a true culinary anthropologist. I am totally in awe of what she does, have all of her other books, and at least read, if not cook from, them pretty often. But this collection of unrelated recipes I really don't need, so I'm chucking it.

Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza, & Calzone     I don't make pizza, calzone, or pasta. If I decide to, I've got a gzillion other books I can consult (see Italian entry above).

Japanese Cooking and Practical Japanese Cooking     Japanese food is a fave but cooking it isn't. I do hotpots, noodles, miso soup, and that's about it. These titles have been idling on my shelves for perhaps a decade. Shame on me. Let them belong to someone who will pay them some attention. (I'm keeping this one though. Who knows, I may get inspired one of these days.)

And a reprieve: Glorious Foods of Greece sat at the top of my pile last night, but I rescued it this morning. I've cooked from it maybe once, and recently bought this book which is now my Greek food bible. But Glorious Foods includes recipes for so many interesting and little-known regional specialties that I want to hang onto it just in case we ever go to Greece - it would serve as a great guide book.

What cookbook(s) could you do without?

Comments

[jamie]

What?!? I have to admit, I love cookbooks, and have a small problem with collecting them. No, I'm not cooking from them, but rather reading them like novels...and I am unable to throw them away! Your post was inspirational, but it lead me to wonder--what did you do with these cookbooks that you can live without??!!

[Kitt]

Golly, I've got a ton of cookbooks, and I could probably live without most of them. But since I have space for them, I keep them and enjoy them. I've been thinking I should set myself a cookbook challenge, though, and do a recipe from each one over time.

When in the '80s were you in Chengdu? Do the names Andy Mertha and Greg Ferguson ring a bell? They were teaching at ... I want to say Sichuan Normal U., but I could be wrong on that. 1988-'89. Such a beautiful city it was then.

[BM]

Yes, where are the cast-offs going?

[Kalyn]

This is why I am NEVER going to move.
At least not unless I get a lot more money; then I might buy another house and have two places with lots of cookbooks!

[Cindy]

I love cookbooks. I especially love old, garage sales, charity shops kind of books. Not only they are cheap to buy, many of them are old receipts and they read like history books. Since I do make a point of collecting from different countries, languages etc. these cookbooks bring cultures to my home.

[Annie]

I stopped buying cookbooks now that I have access to a good library and can borrow a lot of them. I only buy the cookbook when I find myself borrowing the same cookbook repeatedly from the library. I do love Hiroko Shimbo's Japanese Kitchen book. It's really wonderful and I've used it quite a bit.

Of the cookbooks I do own, I love Beranbaum's baking books (the cake and bread bible are really great for me) and I have a bunch of Malaysian ones that I go to for reference.

These days though, I find most of my recipes from foodblogs, the internet or food magazines. Isn't it wonderful how much we can access through the internet? LOVE IT!

[Lisa in Toronto]

Some books are just too specialized.
I love foods of the middle east/mediterranean, but if I only ever make one moroccan carrot recipe from a book, because the other recipes don't suit my needs, then probably I should just copy the recipe and give the book away.
Early in my vegetarian cooking days people would give me random books that had vegetarian in the title, but the recipes were not really very tasty. I should just give those ones away too.
Also any cookbook without an index should probably be packed off to Goodwill.
Thanks for making me think about culling the recipe books!
Best wishes for as smooth a move as possible.

[kiko]

you've just inspired me to review my collection.

[Robyn]

Jamie, BM - castoffs are going to friends. Failing that, a bookstore and, failing that - the round file.

Hi Kitt - we were there '84-85, at Sichuan University, so a few years before your friends. Yes, it was a pretty neat little town, and I know much of the old parts have disappeared. Still - we're dying to go back and eat!

Kalyn - I shudder to think how large my collection might grow if we ever lived in one place for more than, say, five years!

Cindy - I picked up a couple of those types of books when we were back in the States. The secondhand book shops in MI are great troves ...

Hi Annie - I have to say, I have never cooked from a recipe I found on the internet. Don't know why...

Lisa - I know what you mean abt vegetarian books ... there are some horrible ones out there. Thanks for the good wishes.

Kiko - good luck with it then!

[Lina]

I came across this at just the right time! I'm moving house again and am desperately trying to dump some cookbooks. Am having a terrible time deciding about the food porn cookbooks--the ones I never cook from but love looking at the pictures. And your decision to get rid of the Book of Great Desserts is so bold! I've never been able to dump a cookbook that I've had any previous success with. With me luck--I hope to have tossed at least ten by this time next week. Would love to see a list of your favorite cookbooks as well.

[lori]

Hi Robyn,
A reader of my website directed me to yours. I too am getting rid of a lot of my cookbooks/culinary mysteries, a result of a New Year's cleaning binge. Wish I could buy some of your castoffs! :p As they say, one girl's trash is another's treasure!