I have way too many cookbooks. I'm trying to cut back and get rid of, but I find that many of them have some useful info throughout them or a few good-sounding recipes or Then I go to a store and see UPDATED cookbooks with PICTURES of this dishes.
My question: How do you know which cookbooks to get rid of and how many to have around? Some are full of friends' recipes; some commercial. It's not as hard to get rid of cookbooks with mostly fattening recipes, but what about the good cooking tips and good-sounding recipes, but you don't know if it will look appealing to fussy kids -no photos.
Do you go through and get rid of anything that doesn't have photos of the dishes? Is that fair to an otherwise good recipe that just doesn't have a photo to go with it? What about cooking tips in them? How do you STORE all these things-papers, papers, everywhere.
Suggestions?
For favs... we keep those for generations. For the "has 5 things I like in it" I scan them into the computer (or type them).
I have a lot of cookbooks but only use a few on a regular basis. Although I have several cookbooks on the shelf, I am a big fan of allrecipes.com. You can search by ingredients - both what you want and what you don't want. For example, I recently found a chocolate cookie recipe with Nutella. I only keep my favorite recipes, and store them in an accordion folder that is divided into desserts, appetizers, etc. Also, pictures are nice but not really necessary.
I'm with J.J. on this O.. With great recipe sites, why keep the books around?
Other than old family recipes, etc...I use the internet.
I have a software program on my computer that I put all my favorite recipes into. Its called Recipe Manager. Though I still love all my cookbooks, I tend to use the internet or the recipe manager more than a book. :-)
I have found a set of cookbooks that I now go to over all of my other cookbooks and I highly recommend because all the dishes whether they are easy or challenging to make have all turned out wonderful. I am even confident to serve new dishes I have not prepared before to my guests.
Try checking out any of the Barefoot Contessa books, she just released a new one this fall that has simple and easy recipes.
If you want to see some of her recipes before you buy the book you can also check her out at www.foodtv.com or see my website where I recommend great recipe and menu ideas for the busy mom.
See my recent article on great Thanksgiving recipe ideas, you will see many links to Barefoot Contessa recipes as I only recommend recipes I think will be great!
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Scan them into your computer
or......
Get a hole punch and a loose leaf, pull out and save the pages you want and get rid of the rest.
If a later book comes out with a picture - get it from the library and then photo copy or scan it.
s.
I have a loose-leaf binder with clear "pages" and I keep my loose recipes in there. I do purge it periodically if there are recipes that I've never made. Regarding cookbooks, I go through them every couple of years and mainly I give away cookbooks that I haven't used in at least a year. I have about 20-30 cookbooks. Some cookbooks I keep for sentimental reasons. I also find cookbooks with pictures to be more inviting but I have my workhorse cookbooks that I turn to when I want to make a specific recipes - meatballs, instance. Those usually don't have pictures.
