Author Topic: Cookbooks  (Read 3531 times)

wildbeast

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 597
Cookbooks
« on: February 14, 2018, 01:28:15 PM »
I used to enjoy collecting nice hardcover cookbooks and spent lots of time looking at all the great pictures and imagining myself making those dishes.  In reality, I hardly ever used any of the recipes.  But the books are pretty.  :)

I have nieces and nephews in their 20's and I'm wondering if I should offer these books to them.  It's nice to imagine it as a small token that would remind them of me.  But does anyone even use cookbooks anymore?  Especially young people?

I'm in the Kondo mode and getting rid of stuff that I don't use or need.  These books are thick and heavy and collect dust.  Am I better off just donating to Goodwill or library sale? 

rubybeth

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1390
  • Location: Midwest
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2018, 01:32:00 PM »
Are your relatives on Facebook or something? I'd maybe make a post about doing a clear-out of cookbooks and offer them up to anyone who wants them. It really depends what you have, and where people are with cooking. I personally love having a few basic cookbooks for things, but honestly, I mostly just look up recipes online.

GuitarStv

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 23128
  • Age: 42
  • Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #2 on: February 14, 2018, 01:36:41 PM »
I find it handy to have The Joy of Cooking in the kitchen.  I've learned a ton from it, and it has many simple recipes that taste good.  The annoying thing about internet recipes is wading through six pages of the poster's life story and thirty artistically rendered pictures before you can get to the damned recipe.  Even with that annoyance, the majority of the recipes I make are now looked up online.

nereo

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 17496
  • Location: Just south of Canada
    • Here's how you can support science today:
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #3 on: February 14, 2018, 02:01:16 PM »
cookbooks are definitely still desirable to a subset of the millennial crowd (I'm just past that age, but most of my siblings and cousins are firmly in their 20s).  Whether those include your relatives or not... who knows.  It's also an open question about whether the cookbooks you have are the same kind of cuisine your relatives want to make.

+1 to putting a call out on FB or just asking them directly. Otherwise donate or sell them.

ketchup

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 4323
  • Age: 33
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #4 on: February 14, 2018, 02:18:01 PM »
I'd definitely ask them, in as non-guilt-inducing a way as possible.

I'm 26, and I'd probably politely accept them, try one or two recipes, put them on my bookshelf, and never touch them again, but never feel like I could get rid of them for at least five years.  If one was particularly good, I'd maybe type it into a Google Docs document for quick reference later. 

And I cook every meal from scratch.  Cookbooks just don't fit my lifestyle.  Everything's electronic.
The annoying thing about internet recipes is wading through six pages of the poster's life story and thirty artistically rendered pictures before you can get to the damned recipe.  Even with that annoyance, the majority of the recipes I make are now looked up online.
This is definitely an issue, and much worse if looking up a recipe on a smartphone (yeah, GuitarStv, I know :P ).  To that end if I find a recipe we end up making a lot, it will get "archived" into a friendly Google Doc that doesn't take five years of scrolling to see how many green onions we need to have on hand this week.

nereo

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 17496
  • Location: Just south of Canada
    • Here's how you can support science today:
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #5 on: February 14, 2018, 02:31:54 PM »
alright - semi-hijacking this thread but I've got a related quesiton...

I'm trying to find an app that does a good job at storing and sorting recipes.
Ideally it would allow me to import recipes from other sites fairly painlessly, and it has to allow me to enter my own recipes and instructions.  The ability to make notes is essential too. indexing should allow me to search recipes by food type, meal, ingredient etc. with basic keyword  entry.

Anyone use an app they actually like?  I've tried a few but they all seem to let me down.

englishteacheralex

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3890
  • Age: 44
  • Location: Honolulu, HI
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #6 on: February 14, 2018, 02:42:44 PM »
I love cookbooks. Internet recipes are hit and miss. Good cookbooks teach me a lot. I hate clutter, so I mostly get cookbooks from the library. I only own four, and they're my go-tos.

GizmoTX

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1450
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #7 on: February 14, 2018, 03:22:55 PM »
alright - semi-hijacking this thread but I've got a related quesiton...

I'm trying to find an app that does a good job at storing and sorting recipes.
Ideally it would allow me to import recipes from other sites fairly painlessly, and it has to allow me to enter my own recipes and instructions.  The ability to make notes is essential too. indexing should allow me to search recipes by food type, meal, ingredient etc. with basic keyword  entry.

Anyone use an app they actually like?  I've tried a few but they all seem to let me down.

Plan To Eat. (plantoeat.com) I first learned about it here at MMM -- I've been using it for more than 2 years. It does all that you want & more. In addition to easy recipe management, it makes menu planning a snap, AND creates a shopping list. Shop in your kitchen first, then head to the store, with everything organized by categories that you can customize. A SO can access the list on their device. Try it out for free for 30 days. Don't try to put all your recipes in at once, start with a week's worth. PTE has lots of useful videos to explore all the many features. For example, it can track freezer meals for you or let you define menus (a group of recipes to be used at a meal). You can share recipes with invited Friends that also use PTE. PTE is browser based so it doesn't matter what device you use. The annual subscription is ~$34 & is cheaper than monthly.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2018, 03:28:57 PM by GizmoTX »

nereo

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 17496
  • Location: Just south of Canada
    • Here's how you can support science today:
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #8 on: February 14, 2018, 03:31:06 PM »
Thanks GizmoTX - I'll check it out. 
...and now back to our previously scheduled thread.

GizmoTX

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1450
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #9 on: February 14, 2018, 03:41:10 PM »
I enjoy printed cookbooks but find myself using more online sources & ebooks for portability & clutter control. While there are some cookbooks I will keep long term (Ina Garten!), I cleared out a lot of decades old cookbooks because we don't eat like that anymore; the books were sold to Half-Price Books or donated to our local library.

Chippewa

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 725
  • Location: Grilled cheese, animal style
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #10 on: February 14, 2018, 03:44:18 PM »
My daughter doesn’t understand the 1st paragraph OP. I like reading my cookbooks like novels. She complains I never make the recipes in some books. Lol.

I give them to coworkers, then library, then maybe thrift.

Me, i just make more shelf space to Keep Them All ;)

hadabeardonce

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 330
  • It's never too early to learn the value of money.
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #11 on: February 14, 2018, 05:18:28 PM »
I'm 35 and like cookbooks, but I don't have many. Good ones are helpful because everything is consistent - recipe layout, kitchen tools required, ingredients and taste. My wife and I have a cookie book that's been in my family since the early 1980's that we just blindly choose recipes to make, which always turn out great. We tried another cookie book from "Taste of Home" and it's horrible. All the photos looked great, but the recipes were user submitted, so nothing is really consistent and we can't depend on things turning out right the first time.

I like BudgetBytes.com for the same reasons. America's Test Kitchen is awesome, but can be complex. I need to find more sources for good eats.

Freedomin5

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 6482
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #12 on: February 15, 2018, 05:14:53 AM »
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned www.allrecipes.com. You can sort by star rating and read comments from people who have made the recipe before. My experience is that it’s pretty much never hit or miss if you stick with recipes with more than four stars that have been made by a ton of people.

BuildingmyFIRE

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 94
  • Location: North of the Wall
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #13 on: February 15, 2018, 08:33:49 AM »
I personally love cookbooks, and I love to flip through them to get ideas, but I agree with the other posters that it really depends on the person and on the cookbooks themselves.  I have given a ton away over the last few weeks on Everything is Free [town] and Buy Nothing [town] on Facebook, and everyone who has taken something seems to be very grateful.  That might be your best bet. 

Funny enough, I've recently asked for cookbooks on those sites, and the ones I've been offered have been nasty (literally gross) old ones from the 80s and 90s with recipes as out of date as the hairstyles.  I like a good classic like Joy of Cooking or Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but these they were not.

Hafnia

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 2
  • Location: Denmark
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #14 on: February 15, 2018, 10:44:48 AM »
alright - semi-hijacking this thread but I've got a related quesiton...

I'm trying to find an app that does a good job at storing and sorting recipes.
Ideally it would allow me to import recipes from other sites fairly painlessly, and it has to allow me to enter my own recipes and instructions.  The ability to make notes is essential too. indexing should allow me to search recipes by food type, meal, ingredient etc. with basic keyword  entry.

Anyone use an app they actually like?  I've tried a few but they all seem to let me down.

Not an app, but a website www.eatyourbooks.com

I was very lucky to find this site while it was still new and offered lifetime memberships to the first users for a very good price. I would still join the site today  even with the fee to get a the possibility to search the indexes of my 400+ cookbooks

The site has a free option for users with up to 5 cookbooks.

The site has a lot of indexed magazines and blogs and allows you to index recipes you find on different sites/blogs. It aloso allows you to index your own recipes

Give it a try
« Last Edit: February 15, 2018, 11:00:13 AM by Hafnia »

wildbeast

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 597
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #15 on: February 15, 2018, 11:01:54 AM »
Thanks for the replies everyone.  I think I'm going to donate them.  I'm a big fan of Goodwill, having gotten many excellent deals there myself.  This will be a way of paying that back.  That way, the books will go to someone who really wants them.

I think too often, when people offer us free stuff, we take it regardless of whether we really want or need it.  'Cause it's FREE!!! 

And I don't want to put the nieces/nephews in a tough spot by having them feel obligated to take them and then keep them around for fear of hurting my feelings.

But I'm pleasantly surprised to see that young people still enjoy browsing through cookbooks.  I thought they might be thought of as an ancient relic.

Maenad

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 643
  • Location: Minneapolis 'burbs
Re: Cookbooks
« Reply #16 on: February 15, 2018, 12:07:37 PM »
Thanks for the recommendation of Plan to Eat! I've just started evaluating apps so I could move all my recipes into an online cookbook and start using a tablet in the kitchen for everything. I'm piloting ChefTap and My Cookbook Online right now, they're OK, but nothing's grabbed me by the throat yet.