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Eat Your Books » Member Forum » Member Meeting Place » Building, maintaining and culling your cookbook collection

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Building, maintaining and culling your cookbook collection

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Rinshin

#42 Posted : Friday, August 17, 2018 4:42:23 PM(UTC)

I have discovered Recipe Gallery app this week which helps me take photos of clipped and hand written recipes collected over the years. Some are priceless to me and hate to keep using the fully smudged notes for fear of degradation and this app makes it very convenient to use with my ipad. I can even add photos i have taken years ago. Just yesterday made my favorite cheesecake recipe given to me 50 years ago using a Carrier typewriter. Very simple recipe but so unique. I have to select a person to pass on this recipe someday.

Jane

#43 Posted : Friday, August 17, 2018 10:55:53 PM(UTC)

Rinshin - of course you can do that too with EYB. Add your clippings as Personal Recipes, then upload the photo of the recipe. You then can access the full recipe from your recipe searches.

Rinshin

#44 Posted : Saturday, August 18, 2018 12:49:50 PM(UTC)

Originally Posted by: Jane

Rinshin - of course you can do that too with EYB. Add your clippings as Personal Recipes, then upload the photo of the recipe. You then can access the full recipe from your recipe searches.

Thank you Jane. I just tried it. Any way to add more than one photo? I took photos of the typed note and a photo of the cheesecake. It only shows a photo of cheesecake only. I need the notes too. Maybe I am not doing right way?

DFed

#45 Posted : Tuesday, March 12, 2019 11:18:25 AM(UTC)

I'm curious as to what everyone does with books that they are getting rid of (a rarity, I know!). I've recently taken a good, long look at my collection and have several books culled but am not sure what to do next.

We have Half Price Books here, but you generally don't get much of a financial return and I'd much rather see a once-enjoyed cookbook go to a good home. I'm also wondering if there's a forum on EYB about selling/exchanging books already that I've maybe missed?

leilx

#46 Posted : Tuesday, March 12, 2019 12:52:27 PM(UTC)

I was wondering the same thing. I gave some of mine to a local book sale, but anything that didn't sell went to the recycle, which made me wince since some of my cookbooks were in perfect shape, and interesting. I have a pile I couldn't bear to allow that to happen to. We have a second hand place but they often don't accept cookbooks as they have too many of them.

mharriman

#47 Posted : Tuesday, March 12, 2019 6:36:12 PM(UTC)

I’m starting to buy and use Kindle cookbooks. I just tried one of those e books and I like it better than some of my pretty hardbacks. My change of heart came after I added a third place to house new cookbooks by taking away a hutch shelf for my French Soufflenheim pottery and using it for cookbooks instead. I’ve now decided that third space is my cookbook end point. I’m also checking out books from the library more often to try them on for size. If I really like a recipe or recipes, I take a photo of it or check out the book again when needed.

CynthiasCooking

#21 Posted : Tuesday, March 12, 2019 8:26:43 PM(UTC)

Originally Posted by: Senkimekia

I usually end up culling furniture instead of books to make room for more cookbooks :D

I love this!

I separated my books when I sold my house 6 years ago - put the ones I never use into boxes to put into a book swap or a little free library. Haven't actually done that yet, but they are in a storage container not in the house.

I love reading cookbooks and I love cooking so I've acquired and kept a lot and right now I have more books and magazines than shelves. EYB is helping me use them more. Before that it was easier to just look online (I do also have a lot of favorite recipes from food blogs).

There are some great ideas in some of these posts. Thanks everyone for sharing.

Rinshin

#48 Posted : Wednesday, March 13, 2019 2:57:39 PM(UTC)

Since going kindle, i now have 238 kindle cookbooks. I prefer this method better because my ipad cleans up really well when cooking with it in my kitchen better than books. I still have to buy regular Japanese cookbooks and those without kindle option.

annmichele

#49 Posted : Wednesday, March 13, 2019 5:06:27 PM(UTC)

Would someone be able to post the link to the Half Price discussion mentioned here? I did a search but cannot find it. Thanks!

Marsaluna

#50 Posted : Saturday, March 16, 2019 9:24:45 PM(UTC)

If I don’t “love” a cookbook but don’t “hate” it either, I’ll get the Kindle edition (on sale, preferably) and dispose of the hard copy by selling it (or donating it to my local library).

I generally don’t like Kindle cookbooks, they’re no fun to browse and it’s almost like not having the book. However with Eat Your Books, it’s easier to keep track of the Kindle books as part of the collection and if the book is indexed, it’s possible to find the handful of recipes i might want to make from it.

Sometimes my criteria for not “loving” a cookbook are aesthetic. If a cookbook is poorly designed, has bad typography, or has the unfortunate two-color print scheme that was so popular a while back, for instance, and I’m not really that keen on the book itself, I’ll dispose of it and use the Kindle edition and Eat Your Books to keep it in my collection.

There’s nothing like a handsome paper cookbook though when you want to take something to bed!

PennyG

#51 Posted : Sunday, March 24, 2019 8:47:29 AM(UTC)

Last summer, I did a big cull, loaded up the back of my SUV and headed to Half Price Books. I got $60 for my haul. I know I paid much more for these books over the years, but I was thrilled! It felt good to purge, made some room for more cookbooks and somebody else will get use out of these books that no longer interested me.

I actually walked out of HFB with $0 because I picked up four new cookbooks for my $60. LOL!

Shelmar

#52 Posted : Thursday, August 29, 2019 2:23:51 PM(UTC)

I have over 1,900 cookbooks. I apply the five strikes and you are our rule, meaning if I made 5 recipes from a book and did not like them the book is donated to my local friends of the library group. They hold a sale every six months, which I try to go to.

ccav

#53 Posted : Tuesday, September 17, 2019 12:00:05 PM(UTC)

If I find that I don't want to keep a cookbook, I first take it to my favorite bookstore which has new and used books. I opt for store credit rather than cash because I know I will end up using it ;-). Any books they don't take, I donate to my library which has a big booksale once a year and also a room where they sell books that are donated.

E-books for cookbooks don't appeal to me at all. I will check them out from the library to peruse, but if I want to buy a cookbook I get the real thing. The only e-books I have are ones that are out of print.

MarciK

#54 Posted : Wednesday, September 18, 2019 4:11:26 PM(UTC)

The only real plan I have is to put cookbooks I'm no longer interested in down in my basement in my donate pile, then bring it back upsatairs when I question if I really want to get rid of it. Other than that, when I buy new books, I make sure it's something that really catches my attention and offers something my existing books don't fulfill.

goodfruit

#55 Posted : Monday, September 23, 2019 4:01:20 PM(UTC)

I recently cleared out most of a shelf on my cookbook bookshelves following the criteria that I had not cooked out of it either Never or Not in Years. That was easy. I should really go do it again, if I'm honest, the first time didn't make much of a dent!

Ro_

#56 Posted : Monday, September 30, 2019 1:47:21 AM(UTC)

I have very few cookbooks compared to some on here (EYB tells me 63, plus I have binders full of clipped out/printed recipes and probably another 20 or 30 books I haven't added to my bookshelf yet on here). But I only started collecting and cooking 10 years ago, and it makes me feel really uneasy having cookbooks I've never cooked from or only tried one or two recipes from.

My general method is to go through a book when I get it and list all the recipes I know I want to try, then try to get through them and tick them off the list. They'll either then be noted as 'no/meh' ie I wouldn't make it again, or 'definitely one to repeat'. Less often if a dish falls between those two camps I'll note that I'd like to try it again but with tweaks.

If I have made all of the recipes I wanted to try in a book, and none of them or only one of them made it onto the 'definitely one to repeat' list, I'll cull it. Unless it is particularly well written/photographed, nostalgic or generally informative outside the actual recipes.

debkellie

#57 Posted : Sunday, October 6, 2019 5:55:26 PM(UTC)

We're thinking of hitting the road caravanning around OZ for a year or so .. I may just have to cull magazines & books .. or store them in my mum's roof - just not sure how much reinforcing the roof will need to take all the boxes! Can't bring myself to throw away/donate cook books & magazines... ;-)

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Eat Your Books » Member Forum » Member Meeting Place » Building, maintaining and culling your cookbook collection

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