Not so much a problem, as a habit
by Tanya
this is just a random sample
So, I may have a slight problem with buying cookbooks. This is just a random sampling, including some of the more recently acquired ones (like the Momofuku book). Trust me, there is a lot more where that came from. I just can never resist. At bookstores, after periodicals and new fiction and sci-fi releases, I almost always gravitate towards the food and cooking sections.
The problem lies in the fact that a lot of these I haven’t even had a chance to try out. So I decided that you all will hold me accountable. Once or twice a month, I will take one of the cookbooks I have and I will pick a random recipe from it to try out. Then I will share the result of the recipe here with you, as well as a capsule review of the book. Coming up this week, just to get the ball rolling, my thoughts on Elena Makhonko’s Russian Food & Cooking, which provided three of the recipes for my fancy dinner earlier this year.
What books, or other items, are you simply unable to resist, buying them just to own? How do you curate and resist the urge to collect more than you need?
Oh, I used to have quite a terrible cookbook problem. But then I started finding more and more recipes online and found less and less reason to flip through the books themselves. This makes me sad; some of my fondest memories as a little girl are of poring through my grandmother’s Betty Crocker cookbooks while sitting at the kitchen table as she baked pies, planning one day myself to make all manner of meringues and trifles. I found the “floating islands” recipe particularly intriguing though quite honestly even the thought of it now kind of makes me want to retch.
As for items I can never seem to pass up: vintage pyrex nesting bowls and perfume. I have a terrible perfume obsession!
Your perfume posts blow my mind. I just placed an order through a decant circle for some of the newer Halloween/Arkham/Apples collections on BPAL. Have you ordered anything from the recent update?
I haven’t ordered anything yet, although I do try to get at least one or two every Halloween update. I’m moving next week and I just didn’t want to acquire anything extra to bring with me! However, when I get settled in I am thinking of maybe “ghosts in love” and “la calavera catrina”. The pumpkin scents always intrigue me…but I know better by now than to indulge; on my skin, pumpkin and all variants smell like baby puke!
We should compare our cookbook stacks and see what we have in common– and have a mini virtual cookbook club!
Would love it! When’s good for you? My schedule frees up after mid next week. :)