The Man and I have a lot of cookery books, I knew this. I just didn’t quite realise the scale of our collection. Every New Year I like to have a sort out and a tidy up, it helps me deal with the passing of the old year and helps me start the new one with the impression of being more organised. Today I counted the books on our cookery book shelves, yep specific cookery book shelves (I was chuffed to bits when I found our new flat had the perfect set of shelves so they could all be together in one place). Here they are … all 85 of them!!!
I find them oddly comforting books and many have memories attached to them; we pick them up on holiday, people have give them as presents, some are impulse purchases, others longed for volumes. They range from the sublime, hello Fat Duck Cookbook to the ridiculous; I’m looking at you Favourite WV Campervan Recipes ! Shamefully some have been forgotten, never cooked from and the shelves are getting taken over with all kinds of other bits and pieces.
If nothing else this is a waste of money and space, but I do think I would struggle to work out which to give away. So … for the next 85 weeks I aim to cook at least one recipe from a different each week.
Maybe by the end of this I’ll have worked out which books I can live without, (to make space for some more), but I hope it will also encourage me to try some new recipes and ingredients and add some more dishes to the list of ones we have regularly. I hope you’ll find it interesting and fun to follow. I’m sure it won’t be plain sailing and there are some interesting retro books in my collection which I’m going to have steel myself to cook from, but I did buy them!
If anyone has any ideas about how I pick where to being I’d love to hear from you? Would you start alphabetically? By date published? What do you think?
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Great idea, this. Can’t wait to see the results.
thanks! I’m exicted and daunted.
January has been deemed organization month by retailers. Note all the closet organizers and storage containers on sale in the big box stores. They want us to spend money on this idea. I am going through my basement and found several cookbooks more than we need that came from my mother’s house after she died in 2010. Their worth on Amazon is .01 cents, so they are relegated to a yard sale box.
Close your eyes and pick at random! Go to the back index and leaf to a page and once again close your eyes and stick out your finger! Excited for your project!
thanks for the suggestion, have made my first choice but people will have to wait to see which it is.
Exciting! Don’t make us wait too long…
I love this idea and might do something similar! Good luck!