Cookbooks...Use 'Em or Lose 'Em...

I don't much use recipes neither except in baking. I have been cooking for so many years I just get in the kitchen and cook. Some of our favorite things that we eat, I already know the recipe and don't have to look at it. Now when it come to baking I will follow a recipe, then its important to have good measurements. I do have a few cookbooks that I will hold onto. I have a Betty Crocker cookbook that I would never think about getting rid of.

I have quite a few and they are well used. The oldest and most used is a Better ocker one. It had a red cover and I got it in 1969 and had since given the sme book (reprinted) to my daugher and grandaughter.

I am just like you except that I got rid of some of mine by giving them to goodwill. I was so stupid...it was the ones I used. I ripped a few pages out but I've never seen them since. One was a recipe for some chocolate cinnamon biscuits that were to die for, another was for an oil chocolate cake that became more moist as it aged....yummo. I still have recipe books I've never used but I do user some of them. I just can't find what I want out of them. I find sometimes that the ingredients are unusualm for a dish and i'm not prepared to buy a whole lot of something just to try out a recipe that i may or may not like.

I have over 150 cookbooks. I used to use them regularly. I probably will again one day. I cannot bear to part with any one of them. My favorite cookbook is one from 1976. The Girl Scouts put it out in my school district in Ohio. It is a community cookbook. A collection of everything and anything.

I hold onto a few. Every now and then a cookbook will appeal to me on some level and I'll buy it. I love to flip through them and read the recipes. It's great for getting ideas. If I'm looking for something specific, I search online. Even still the recipes I get online are more for ideas than for actually following the recipes.

i don't collect cookbook ,but i collect many books in cars .i also have the same feeling that i don't want to apart from these books ,even i have not time to look

I only have a couple of cookbooks and I don't use them very often. I do have a drawer full of recipes that I got from the ladies I used to work with. We would have carry-ins and then of course everybody wanted the recipe for a certain dish. Over the years I have been given a lot of great recipes.

I use to use them all of the time. Now that we have moved into the internet age, I have not bought a cook book in about 11 years. But even before my computer I only used recipes as a base line. I have always changed the ingredients to suit my own and my family's tastes. but you are right I still have a cabinet in the kitchen that is for my cook books that never get taken down or given to a book store or library. I am that way by all of my books.

I don't cook but I bake. I do have a few cook books with some good recipes but I don't have any that I don't use.Suggestion. On a cold rainy day, have your mother and grandmother over to your place and go through the recipes together.Between you 3, you can weed out the recipes. And you can share your favorites.and you can ask them their favs,type them into your computer, and you will always have them.

Hahaha. I can really relate with you. I am not good in cooking and actually I am just still learning. I have several cookbooks that I bought individually from before and also have now cookbooks that my husband had from the time he wasn't married yet to me. So I have quite a lot of cookbooks and it seems a pretty good number of collections. What we do from time to time is read through these at night when we're about to sleep. But when it is actually cooking time, I seldom use the cookbooks, but I do get ideas from them somehow. I also found out I like going online and get recipes from there. I think it is the simplicity of how the recipe is done that I get to use them actually.

as my girls will tell you moms a chemist not a cook i dont cook never did so i guess i dont need em ,when my children were small my mom lived with us and she did all the cooking now im alone and there all grown i live on take out and tv dinners !

LOL I know what you mean. I don't really have that many cookbooks and the ones I have I think I use one most of all and the others hardly ever. Like you I do have a lot of loose pages with recipes - much more than books - and I use those ones more because they are recipes that I enjoyed and asked for as opposed to books that might have recipes that we like and others that we don't. I never thought about throwing out the cookbooks I don't use - there's always that thing: maybe one day I'll use it hehe

I have a lot of cookbooks too, twoey. Some have recipes dating back to The Depression. I could never part with them. I am a hoarder by nature. I had amassed a huge collection of recipe cards several years ago. They were left in my old apartment when we moved into the new one. Idid not discover this until a few days later. I got so mad at my boyfriend fro leaving them behind that I didn't speak to him for 2 days. He went back to try and get them but the apartment had already been cleaned up. I moped over the loss for months.

I read them from time to time. I don't have that many since I like to look at a few recipes and I like inventing my own things even more. I've even posted stuff on mylot as responses to other people's cooking or eating questions. I'll still hold on to my cookbooks since some were gifts from mom and one was a grilling book from dad.

We have tons of cookbooks, but it is my husband who collects them. He is actually a better cook than I am. He loves to try out new recipes and recipes from other countries. He doesn't mind a meal that takes several steps and a couple of hours to complete. Me? I'm a microwave gal! So, we probably have a whole bookcase full in our library.

I have a couple small cookbooks and a recipe box but seldom go thru them for recipes. I tend to just create as I go. Made some very interesting and tasty dishes that way. If I had to part with them, I could.

i don't use cook books very often i beleive the same thing emeril lagasse says that cooking is like an experiment. the only time i use a cook book or a set recipe is when its something that requires a set recipe and the only cooking that requires a set recipe is baking

I don't have any cookbooks. I make my own recipe books. I collect recipes eveywhere. This way I have all my own recipes. Back in the day I did have books, but I cut out all the recipes I like and threw the books out.

I have 'two'cookbooks I am unwilling to part with. I say two because one is actually a 16 volume set. My mom gave the set to me when I turned 17 and started making plans to move out on my own. They are The Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery circa 1973. They have almost anything you can think of. They are special to me because at the time she got them they were one of those grocery store things (from Winn-Dixie) where you buy so much per week and get the book for a small price. She had to go for 16 weeks and gather them up. At the time she was trying to raise three teens alone, so even those few dollars were important. I have used them now for 34 years and counting. My other is a really old cookbook printed in 1956, the year I was born. It has the best yummy recipes, even tells how to choose a fresh chicken at market, bring it home, pluck it and dress it before cooking lol. I love everything I have made from it. The best is a chocolate pudding cake, and yep, you make the pudding from scratch to add to the cake batter. People always rave about this recipe whenever I make it. I love it also because in the margins are my own first attempts at writing, copying the words on the pages. I have some others, but they end up being given to other people soon. I mostly now get recipes from the web. But these cookbooks are the first things I unpack in a new kitchen whenever I have moved. I don't like to cook much, only do it because I love to eat lol. But for some odd reason I love to colllect recipes. So now whenever I know someone moving out on their own or moving to a new home, I print some up and make a cookbook in a small binder as a housewarming gift. I have super simple recipes for novices, more intricate ones for experienced cooks. When my nephew went away to college, I made him one of hotplate and microwave recipes. When he came back home he admitted that his roomies begged him to leave it and that the silly thing was shared throughout the dorm he lived in lol. My neice's husband thanked me profusely their first Christmas, he claims the one I gave her is how she learned to cook. So I will also occasionally buy a cookbook, scan the recipes I try that I like, but very soon they go to my 'gifts' box to be given to someone else to use. Heaven knows I don't need any more recipes or cookbooks, I just can't seem to help myself, I keep collecting the darned things lol.

I have ONE cookbook that my mother gave me eaons ago that i STILL refer to with some recipies! but over all i have TONS of recipe cards that i have most of my mothers recipes on and others i have found over the years! - ill print them out and paste to a recipe card as soon as i can! - i also have lots in my laptop saved as well lol - We are hardly ever having the same thing in a month! :) lol And im always looking for new stuff too:) i could ot part with my recipe cards but if i lost my book id live! :)XX XX