Forum

I haven't been a member that long but I am finding it really useful to get me to actually use all the cookbooks I have collected.  At times it would be overwhelming to search for  a recipe in my books but this helps so much.  I currently live in the US but I used to live and most of my relatives are still there, in Buckinghamshire, not too far away.  

As it’s a lazy bank holiday here in the U.K. thought I’d better get round to adding something about me as everyone else seems to have. Am a 40 something bloke that grew up in a small farming town in the the south west of the U.K. Like most, when the time came I couldn’t wait to get out. Not surprisingly moved to London. Have always had an interest in food. My father is a classically trained French chef. Although I can’t say we ate Michelin starred meals every night we did get to understand the sourcing, food combinations and techniques of using real food (father would go to the abattoir to get tripe and whole lamb for instance). Didn’t have my first McDonalds till I was 16. Loads of people would ‘just happen’ to turn up at meal times and now I understand why. I travel fairly extensively and nothing gets you under the skin of a place like eating the local food. Use the Eurostar about once a month to go Paris food shopping. Buying and using cookbooks helps to broaden my palette and experience different cultures. So many people I know just seem to rotate the same 7/8 meals :( Am a bit of a cookbook fascist insofar as they have to A) have interesting recipes B) look and feel good. Think along the lines of Heidi Swanson Near + Far, Cibi Meg Tanaka and most stuff from Phaidon. Dislike anything Chefy and anything from celebrity chefs as it’s just so horribly generic.... yup I’m looking at YOU Jamie Oliver et. al. I do have some of them as gifts from others. Have no wish to be in the Guinness book of world records for the most cookbooks. Buy on average about 1 cookbook a week so doubt I’ll get over a 1000. I like to think of my collection as curated! O.K I’ll shut up now! :)

haha, I've not heard of Cibi, so looked it up.  Interesting.  We would actually pronounce it as cheebe and my niece's name has been changed from Chiharu to Chibo, another form of chibi. 

BTW, it's wonderful reading all the people introducing themselves here.  Hi everyone!

Hi, I'm brand new here, and I just added a bio to my profile page, using almost every available character. I'm a single female in my early fifties, living and working in N.Y.C., who has been doing a lot more cooking these days.

Ugh. Just re-read what I wrote, and it sounds like I'm writing a profile for a dating site. Didn't mean for it to come off like that.

Anyway, I've always enjoyed organizing things as well as typing and data entry and all that good stuff. So I'm looking forward to doing some member indexing, especially since only 13% (10 out of 78 titles) of my collection has already been indexed. Maybe that's because I'm old and most of my collection is pretty old--quite a few of my cookbooks don't even have ISBNs ... like Placid Eating, compiled by Climena M. Wikoff of Lake Placid, N.Y., copyright 1948. I inherited that one from my aunt who, I believe, knew the author.

Very happy that I found the site. I hope to get a lot more use out of the cookbooks on my shelves, many of which I don't think I've ever even used to make a single recipe.

Joined up because I'm transitioning my library of 200+ dead tree cookbooks to Kindle.  

Though this site does help cut through the clutter, I still find it remarkable how difficult it is to find recipes for an ingredient / dish from a curated set of recipes, given the state of search today.

The site also continually reminds me how much I used to lean on the quality of the art on the cover (as oppposed to the quality of the recipes within) when choosing between cookbooks to search.    I now find myself consulting 20+ year old cookbooks a lot more.

Yes, I am trying to make myself use my cookbook collection rather than google for recipes and I am finding lots of referrals for my older cookbooks.  For instance the other night I had 3 acorn squash to use and one of my first suggestions was my NY Times cookbook from Craig Claibourne published circa 1990.  I don't even remember the last time I used it, so I pulled it out and made baked acorn squash with sherry, a perfectly fine, super easy side dish. 

I am finding this experience (using EYB) fun and definitely pushing me to use my cookbooks more.  

Hi Karen, I'm not retired yet but my kids are grown up now and I'm still baking for them.  I've visited that area of Canada, it is a really beautiful country.

Hi, loved your line about writing a dating site profile, LOL.  I am also a single (divorced) female in my early 50s. I live in NJ.  I had a bit more luck in that quite a few of my collection were indexed.  I was surprised as many of them were by British authors. I tried my hand at indexing two books and learned a lot from the experience.  

Hi everyone. I'm Marci from Wisconsin, USA. I'm new to this site. It's nice to be part of a community of cookbook lovers. I'm still working on loading all my books, and might make a separate post with questions. For now I'm pretty excited to at least have some of my books indexed. In the process of testing this out, I discovered I have a possom recipe. I'd try it, but I don't know that they have possum hunting season up here.

Hi everyone,

I am Jessica, and I live in a suburb of Chicago (Evanston). I have a wall of cookbooks, but nowhere near the 1000 some people are mentioning here! I belong to a knitting site (Ravelry) where knitting books are indexed, and I LOVE the functionality. As soon as I heard about this site, I had to join. I have a wide variety of cookbooks, from the classics (Joy of Cooking, New York Times Cookbook, you get the idea) to very specific topics (my latest purchase is called Meringue, and I love it!). I typically 'interview' a cookbook first by checking it out from the library. If it has a couple of recipes that I love, I will probably buy it. I once gave a way two of my cookbooks (before I knew I was a collector), and have regretted it ever since! I don't know how some homes get by with just a few cookbooks--how is that even a thing? 

Hello everyone! My name is Marie and I am a city girl who fell for a farm boy. We currently live in Northwest Illinois (USA) on our farm, which we consider the most beauriful place in the world. As you guessed, I do help with caring for our two horses, a few head of Hereford beef, and can handle some of the large equipment around here. However, while I do have a collection of cookbooks, it is only about 30, and I am not fond of cooking, I do want to put out a good meal. I'm hoping using this website will help me spend less time looking and more time doing. I am totally open to suggestions and ideas. One little quirck about me is I am color-blind, so I have learned how to take suggestions....the most fun one was my hubby came in the house after I had been out to the grocery store and he told me he liked my polka-dot underwear....I then knew why I was getting some strange looks at the store....oh the joys of being a color-blind woman...LOL

I just found this site and looks like I've fallen in love. I have around 300 cookbooks, all digital. I guess I know what I'll be doing for the next week!

I'm a chef nearing retirement (or at least slowing down). I live in an RV, so I'm an itinerant chef, I guess. Currently cooking at a resort in the northern Arizona mountains and will be cooking near Fargo ND this summer.

This Forum topic used to be very active but seems to have dropped away in recent years. It's a nice way for EYB members to learn more about newcomers so I am bumping it up in the hope it can be revived.

It would be nice if we had the option to read the most recent messages first.  15 pages to get to the newest message is a bit of a slog.

Anyway, I joined EYB a year ago and have found my cookbook collection to have almost doubled!  Having so many cookbooks it's great to be able to compare recipes for the same dish without having to lug them off the bookshelves.  And I enjoy reading the notes people make about the recipes they cook.  One of the best things about living here in NYC is to be able to source internatonal ingredients at the loal specialty stores, and having a greenmarket that operates 4 days a week.