Despite being what would inevitably fit into the classic definition of a “foodie”, I don’t buy a lot of cookbooks. As is obvious from this blog, I don’t post a lot of recipes, and while I do love to cook and try new things in the kitchen, I tend not to be a big cookbook collector. Part of this is due to limited space on my kitchen shelves, and part is due to being one of those obsessive Virgo types who chuck anything they haven’t used in a year.
Since most cookbooks never actually get used, but instead fill in as a kind of porn for many readers who look at the pictures and dream of cooking the recipes but never actually get around to it, I’ve found it beneficial to both my bank account and the part of my brain that stresses about clutter to just not buy many of the darn things. You can find most recipes somewhere on the web these days anyway, and aside from the food porn readers, cookbooks are one of those analog inventions that it would be logical to assume will disappear within the decade.
So I’m completely confused by the fact that I came back from the CNE last weekend with six new cookbooks. Okay, to be fair, they were 3/$10 at one of those discount vendor set-ups with piles of remaindered CDS, DVDs and books. Truthfully I don’t really need any of them, but they each have their charms and uses, and at $3 and change each, I can probably find a spot for them.
There’s often obvious reasons books end up in the remaindered pile, though, and it wasn’t until got them home that I figured out why.