Cookbook Purge
Jul. 17th, 2007 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebErin's It's a Cookbook is an excellent post about how she purged her cookbooks with extra hints for readers who would like to do the same.
I was not familiar enough with my cookbooks to do it the way she did it. I just don't do real cooking all that often. Also, I have an entire bookcase in the dining room, so I don't really need to get the cookbooks down to one shelf. In fact, I didn't follow any of her advice at all except "Store your cookbooks in your kitchen." Sort of--they're in the dining room, on the end opposite the kitchen, but that way they don't need to be behind a door. (The other advice is all less controversial.) Here's what I did.
First I just thought about which cookbooks were my favorite, without looking at them. I knew that if I could have only one cookbook it would be the loose-leaf notebook where I have collected all my favorite recipes in sheet protectors. If I could have only two, the second would be Better Homes New Cookbook, my comfortable, familiar general-purpose cookbook. I also knew I wanted to keep Tea-Time at the Inn even though I might never cook a single thing from that cookbook just because I love looking at it and reading through it.
A braver soul than I might have been able to purge all the rest. My plan A was to cook one recipe from some of the books and judge the entire book based on how that turned out. Hey, one data point is infinitely better than zero.
But then while R. was gone at dance class or something, I just yanked off every specialty cookbook that I wasn't sure we wanted and re-organized the shelves so there was room for large pretty things that we don't use often. The new structure was:
1. Top of bookcase - pretty flower pot. That's all. The broken window AC, with a print attached to it to cover it up, is directly over the bookcase, and it looks best with just empty space.
2. Top shelf - medium-sized cookbooks and R's cardfiles, the beautiful clear/wooden one in front of the prosaic plastic one.
3. Next shelf - Kitchenaid mixer which is beautiful and period but huge and rarely used. (Is "period" a term normally used outside the SCA? What I mean is I have a fifties kitchen, and this mixer looks like it belongs.) That's on one side. On the other is a batch of kombucha, a fermented tea which should do better here than where it was on the counter near the window because it's better shaded here.
4. Next shelf - Tall cookbooks.
5. Bottom shelf - Music books and canned goods.
When R. came home, he approved of this system. So far he has always approved of my reorganization schemes. Awesome!
So then while I was gone visiting with family, he went through all the books and made sure the ones he wanted were on the shelf. He put the rest in a box.
So then today while he was taking a guitar class, I went through and did the same. My strategy had one interesting step to it which was to look up the books on Amazon and see what people thought. In some cases the reviews made it clear that the cookbooks were good for people with my priorities: easy to cook, ordinary ingredients, halfway healthy, and yummy. So I just kept those.
Then if most of the recipes looked like more trouble than I would ever be in the mood for, I put them in the box. If they mostly looked unappetizing except for one or two recipes that I had bookmarked, I copied the bookmarked recipes and then put the books back in the box.
I also checked the books that were still on the shelf that I wasn't already positive R. liked. I removed The Art of Dutch Cooking to have my sister look at. She may know of some dishes we should check this book for, having lived in Belgium for a while (in Brussels, on the border between the French- and Dutch-speaking parts). I also found four more cookbooks to remove, but left them out for R. to check and he put them back.
So now we're down to 1.5 shelves worth of cookbooks. And the mixer is off the table and the kombucha is off the counter.
And I feel like I'm more likely to remove cookbooks than to add more. And that's because if I do get around to trying more recipes and find that the first one or two from a cookbook seem without promise, I will just get rid of the cookbook.
Duh, I just remembered I could take a picture. Of course now you can see that we still have cans on the top shelf, too. And I'm noticing there's no fifties look whatsoever in the frame, but the floor is black and white vinyl tile and the counters are orange, so just trust me on this.
(Chikuru, you can see what I was telling you about light switches.) R. likes replacing plastic switch plates with wooden ones and white switches with black ones, and now I do, too.
I was not familiar enough with my cookbooks to do it the way she did it. I just don't do real cooking all that often. Also, I have an entire bookcase in the dining room, so I don't really need to get the cookbooks down to one shelf. In fact, I didn't follow any of her advice at all except "Store your cookbooks in your kitchen." Sort of--they're in the dining room, on the end opposite the kitchen, but that way they don't need to be behind a door. (The other advice is all less controversial.) Here's what I did.
First I just thought about which cookbooks were my favorite, without looking at them. I knew that if I could have only one cookbook it would be the loose-leaf notebook where I have collected all my favorite recipes in sheet protectors. If I could have only two, the second would be Better Homes New Cookbook, my comfortable, familiar general-purpose cookbook. I also knew I wanted to keep Tea-Time at the Inn even though I might never cook a single thing from that cookbook just because I love looking at it and reading through it.
A braver soul than I might have been able to purge all the rest. My plan A was to cook one recipe from some of the books and judge the entire book based on how that turned out. Hey, one data point is infinitely better than zero.
But then while R. was gone at dance class or something, I just yanked off every specialty cookbook that I wasn't sure we wanted and re-organized the shelves so there was room for large pretty things that we don't use often. The new structure was:
1. Top of bookcase - pretty flower pot. That's all. The broken window AC, with a print attached to it to cover it up, is directly over the bookcase, and it looks best with just empty space.
2. Top shelf - medium-sized cookbooks and R's cardfiles, the beautiful clear/wooden one in front of the prosaic plastic one.
3. Next shelf - Kitchenaid mixer which is beautiful and period but huge and rarely used. (Is "period" a term normally used outside the SCA? What I mean is I have a fifties kitchen, and this mixer looks like it belongs.) That's on one side. On the other is a batch of kombucha, a fermented tea which should do better here than where it was on the counter near the window because it's better shaded here.
4. Next shelf - Tall cookbooks.
5. Bottom shelf - Music books and canned goods.
When R. came home, he approved of this system. So far he has always approved of my reorganization schemes. Awesome!
So then while I was gone visiting with family, he went through all the books and made sure the ones he wanted were on the shelf. He put the rest in a box.
So then today while he was taking a guitar class, I went through and did the same. My strategy had one interesting step to it which was to look up the books on Amazon and see what people thought. In some cases the reviews made it clear that the cookbooks were good for people with my priorities: easy to cook, ordinary ingredients, halfway healthy, and yummy. So I just kept those.
Then if most of the recipes looked like more trouble than I would ever be in the mood for, I put them in the box. If they mostly looked unappetizing except for one or two recipes that I had bookmarked, I copied the bookmarked recipes and then put the books back in the box.
I also checked the books that were still on the shelf that I wasn't already positive R. liked. I removed The Art of Dutch Cooking to have my sister look at. She may know of some dishes we should check this book for, having lived in Belgium for a while (in Brussels, on the border between the French- and Dutch-speaking parts). I also found four more cookbooks to remove, but left them out for R. to check and he put them back.
So now we're down to 1.5 shelves worth of cookbooks. And the mixer is off the table and the kombucha is off the counter.
And I feel like I'm more likely to remove cookbooks than to add more. And that's because if I do get around to trying more recipes and find that the first one or two from a cookbook seem without promise, I will just get rid of the cookbook.
Duh, I just remembered I could take a picture. Of course now you can see that we still have cans on the top shelf, too. And I'm noticing there's no fifties look whatsoever in the frame, but the floor is black and white vinyl tile and the counters are orange, so just trust me on this.
(Chikuru, you can see what I was telling you about light switches.) R. likes replacing plastic switch plates with wooden ones and white switches with black ones, and now I do, too.
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Dutch cooking
on 2007-07-19 12:32 pm (UTC)I also like replacing switch plate covers (usually with something colorful and amusing - e.g. Taz running crazy in Hawaii) but have never thought of changing the switches themselves. I'm not sure what I think of the white wall/wood plate/black switch combo. I keep wanting the wall in that photo to be a rich, dark green or burgundy or something. (Well, I guess I would want that in any case, being too fond of jewel tone walls.) I think I prefer the white switches instead of black on a white wall.