I don't collect cookbooks, but I know the ones I use the most are the ones with the most splatters on them. Why not give away the pristine cookbooks and keep the splattery ones?

I'll take you up on ONE cookbook I have....Dinosaur Bar B Que!

hee hee

And boy do I get it on the stuck in a rut.

I only have one cookbook. Betty Crocker that's about 30 years old. Pages are falling out and splattered. Most recipes come from the internet now. I have about 800 pages in my "to try" file. LOL

Your plan sounds like a good one and will probably work for you. I have another problem. With a collection approaching 1000 cookbooks, I have hundreds to get rid of that I know I'll never use.

And you think you're compulsive? I know I am.

Nancy

Well how disappointing! I thought this was a contest to see who had the most cookbooks and I figured I'd win. But....Nancy if your estimate is any where near accurate you may have me beat. May being the key word here.

jude

Here I am - another compulsive Nancy - but I only have 350 cookbooks. I'm going to start another topic about cookbooks to get y'all's favorites - perhaps they overlap mine? Or, maybe I need to buy another couple (..hundred). LOL

booberry85 - Name the 9 cookbooks you have that you want to use for you experiment. Some of us might be able to help you because we have the same ones and have marked the best.

Mostly I pick a main dish ingredient from the fridge or freezer and then look in my TNT cookbooks for recipes using it. Sometimes I pick a recipe and then go buy the ingredients for it, but not often. Once or twice I was without ideas and, being tired of the same-ol'-same-ol', made a cookbook to be a fan of pages (like a deck of cards being splayed)and dropped in a piece of paper randomly, determined to make whatever it was printed there. Results were really weird. I didn't have access to fresh turtle for one, another was for Asian Egg Pancakes with Cherry Sauce - no way, and one was for Prune Ice Cream -uh, no thank you. It was not a successful way to choose, but you might try it with a cookbook you have from which you like most of the recipes. Sorta spin the wheel and take your chances.

Another thing to consider, since you are pressed for time, is to plan a week's menu on Sunday. Since you have the days organized, get your recipes' ingredients lined up with one day of shopping for the whole week. A lot of times stuff can be made ahead or like ingredients prepared together and divided for different days of the week (like bunches of carrots or cooked chicken or chopped onions). That way is a time saver and you'll have less stress when you come home buzzy for lack of the answer to "just what was I going to make Tuesday?".

Nancy

How I determine what stays and what goes is by how many post-it-notes are sticking out of them and how often they get used as reference material.

I'm constantly going through my large collection of cookbooks and I use them as reading material while I watch television in the evening. Ironically, after any given day I'll have a large stack of cookbooks and textbooks on cooking/baking science and other food-related issues, next to the computer at the end of the day. I've used them to answer all kinds of questions on the boards I visit. My books are as much resources of general information as they are a collections of recipes. Information starting from 1859 through today.

I like to make at least one new recipe every week.

In the book, "The Joy of Simple Living" by Jeff Davidson, he writes:

BETTER GET COOKING: If you have just eight recipe books in your household, each offering 250 to 650 recipes, they can add up to as many as 5,200 recipes. If you tried one new recipe each week, it would take 100 years to prepare them all.

-Grainlady

I think it was about 5-6 years ago when someone asked how many cookbooks some of us had. So I counted each and every one. I was shocked and swore off buying any more. But when Christmas rolls around or my birthday it's so much easier to put cookbooks on the list. Then there's the automatic ships that I have gotten for years.

I read cookbooks like they were a novel and even if I don't make any recipes right away, I mark them and usually learn something from every book. I guess there are worse habits.

Nancy

Another way is to have someone pick a number, then you make the recipe on that page. If you want a main dish, you could limit the numbers to only those pages for meat, poultry, fish, seafood, casseroles, etc. Or, limit the number selection to what you have in the freezer - say poultry pages only.

Or get real brave and have someone pick a number from the poultry pages and another number from the vegetable pages. You don't even have to thumb to the pages, just open the content pages and go from these.

Teresa

I think it is a fantastic idea.

If you wanted to come back to this thread, from time to time, with update posts about what recipe you made, from what book, and your thoughts about it - I'd be happy to see this thread go on for months and months.

Through human evolution, there is no task that people have spent more time on than food. The acquiring, preparation, cooking, and enjoyment of food. An immense amount of energy and creativity has been lavished on food. As much, I would argue, as on painting or sculpture or even music. Cultures and regions are defined and distinguished by their food. There is a wonderful diversity in the world's food, so much to explore. I get stuck in ruts, many of us do, and you have a great idea for unsticking.

Johnliu - you forgot the purchasing or saving, sowing, growing, reaping, and storage of food. That takes more time for me (and other farmers) than the rest of food enjoyment, but equally satisfying. We live in an age where the diversity of fresh or preserved foods and worldwide shipping allows us to not only eat something unheard of 10-20 years ago, but enables us to also to grow it ourselves, thanks to seed and plant exchanges world wide. Not everything grows in every climate but amazing technology has allowed us to expand by growing "out of bounds" using greenhouses, grow lights, and aquaculture. Alton Brown had a segment on wonton wrappers where he's shown cruising down the store's aisles. His statement really struck me, "Explore your local (grocery) store and pick up something you've never used before." That surely got me out of a rut years back - i.e., What the heck do you do with chorizo? Now it is on our menu every month, in one dish or another, along with a whole host of other foodstuffs and a variety of new (to me) cuisines. And, that is why I have 350 cookbooks - purging them will not be a part of MY downsizing plan.

I'm with you that booberry85 should continue this thread and give us some examples of what she makes (for months)!

Nancy

Thanks everyone for the words of advice. I'll have to post the 9 books tonight (I'm at work right now.) So I went through a few cookbooks last night. If I couldn't find 4 main meals that I wanted to make out of the book, the book went into my Rescue Mission pile. So, I now have 4 more books to go to the Rescue Mission (I got rid of about 15 this past weekend and another 5 the weekend before.)

I did make out a menu for the next month. I only hope I stick to it

Nancy, a thousand cookbooks!!! Where do you put them all?

Like Wizard, my collection numbers in the hundreds and may very well be near 1000. I could never throw out or otherwise get rid of a cookbook just because the first recipe I tried was not to my liking. I think I'd have to try several before making that decision. I have been known to give away cookbooks that are rarely used, some looking as if they just came off the press. I have an addictive personality, and since I don't do drugs or drink, it manifests itself in collecting whatever my interest is at the time. I have stopped buying/collecting cookbooks, and have slowly been weeding through them and giving those away that no longer interest me. When I was a young woman, my only criteria was that it taste good. Now that I'm older (and fluffier) many of the cookbooks that I used as a young woman are left collecting dust on the shelves.

I am like Nancy, I read them like novels. I always have a stack by my bed, when I get to the bottom, I put that stack away and get another bunch out.

For those of you with hundreds and/or thousands...may I ask where you keep them? Are they all in your kitchen? I guess I don't even have 50 and I keep only the gorgeous ones out!!

I keep mine in our public library. Grin!

Here are the 9 that I'm working with now:

Polish Cooking - Marianna Olszewska Heberle
Classic Tex Mex and Texas Cooking - Sheryn R. Jones
Sephardic Flavors - Joyce Goldstein
The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook - Gloria Bley Miller
*Louisiana Tastes - Chef Paul Prudhomme
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan
French Food American Accent - Debra Ponzek
*Classic American Food without the Fuss - Frances McCullough & Barbara Witt
Classic Home Cooking - Dorling Kindersley, Mary Berry,Marlena Spiela

* I'm on the fence with these books. So after I'm done with the recipes I might put them in the Rescue Mission pile.

On the Rescue Mission pile so far this week
Cookshelf Mediterranean - Anne White
Mennonite Foods & Folkways from South Russia - Norma Jost Voth
French Tarts - Lina Dannenburg
Mexican Cooking for Dummies

Jessy, I hope you some things you liked in the Dinosaur BBQ book. I should have thought that out better. I guess its less clutter if you keep your library of cookbooks in the library!

I am another "cookbook addict." There are always several in my yearly garage sale, but I just can't help myself from buying cookbooks, regional ones I can't resist.

I'm kind of a minor addict, next to Nancy. And yes, I've SEEN her cookbooks, so I can vouch that she's got 1,000, at least. I would have guessed more. (grin)

I still have 40 or 50, I've sold some at yard sales, gave some away, dontated to the library. Then I bought some more, LOL. Some I'll keep forever, no matter what, like Grandma's old Farm Journals and the Loveless Cafe book that Elery bought me as a gift on one of our first dates. I have a whole collection of something called, I think, "Country Cooking" that actually belongs to Ashley, if only I could get her to take it to Kevin's house.

My real "problem" is magazines. I have Cooking Light and Food Network and Cook's Illustrated and Bon Appetit and Saveur. Piles of them. Some I've read and have recipes I want to try. some I haven't had time to read yet. I really need to get rid of some of those...

OK, so I need to try some new recipes. I will. After the wedding...

I'll love watching Becky do her cooking, though.

Annie

LOL Becky I should have added 'cookbooks that are gifts are not to be donated'. I keep those.

Sissyz, the kitchen is probably the worst place to keep cookbooks. All that moist heat can't be good for them. I have several ceiling high bookcases in my office at home. DH keeps his computer books and such in part of one and I get to utilize the rest of that case and the other two for my cookbooks.

I'm addicted to cookbooks too. But I've learned that the library really IS the best place to get them. I've got a revolving stack of library cookbooks which I am constantly perusing. The best part is that I get to see all the newest latest cookbooks but don't have to shell out the $$$ for them.

I bookmark the recipes I think I might like to make, then sit at the computer with the book and either type them in or google them. Probably 80% of the recipes I want are already out there on the internet somewhere.

There are very few cookbooks from which I can glean more than a half dozen recipes. So it's really nice to just copy those I like and give the book back.

I do have a collection of cookbooks of my own. I keep the ones I like the best in my family room bookshelves and the rest are in a back bedroom. I need to go through those and get rid of the ones I don't want anymore... but I have so many library ones rotating through, who has time!? LOL

dedtired turned me on to a website called 'paperbackswap', which is exactly what it sounds like. I joined and I have found that cookbooks are in demand. That's good for 'selling' books but not so good for 'buying'. My point is - the website is a good way to ensure your cookbook discards find a specific, wanted home, and you can earn credits towards other books you may want to 'buy'.

When I found out there was an iphone app that lets you scan a book and find out if there are members waiting for it, I had my DH download it onto his phone. Now I have to separate him from his phone and head to my library booksale room, bwhahaha. Win-win-win.