When to Get Rid of a Cookbook
My little family is moving to a new home soon, and so we've begun the necessary process of purging all the stuff we don't want to pack up, including outgrown baby clothes, outworn adult clothes, most of the contents of the mysterious kitchen junk drawer, and...this is the really hard part...one out of every ten of our books, including (gulp) cookbooks.
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It's easy to know when to get rid of some things. Shoes wear out, clothes go out of style, junk becomes junkier. And most regular old books are easy to sort through. (Hate it? Donate it.) But when is it time to say sayonara to a cookbook? And hasn't that question gotten increasingly complicated to answer in this age of great online recipe databases, including, ahem, Epi's own?
My own cookbook jettisoning criteria follow after the jump...
Keep the cookbook if...
1. We have actually used three or more of the recipes in the cookbook in the past year. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, I'm lookin' at you.
2. It's a classic. Where would I be without my crusty copy of Molly O'Neill's New York Cookbook?
3. It's about pie. Sorry moving guys, but I cannot part with any of my pie cookbooks, so don't ask me.
Donate if...
1. It's never been used. If I've never been inspired to cook from it, it's probably safe to let it go.
2. There are only one or two recipes in the book that I use consistently, or at all. I can just copy them out and save myself some space.
3. Most of the recipes in the book are available in some form online. Shocking, I know: This is a heretical thought for most book-lovers, but it suits my kitchen style. I've become a bring-the-computer-into-the-kitchen kind of girl.
Obviously these criteria are based on my own idiosyncrasies and the exigencies of a tiny Brooklyn kitchen, and my focus is on the practical applications of my cookbook collection, rather than the sentimental or even monetary value of the books. I ain't saying it's going to be pretty, but I think this purging project will make my cookbook shelf leaner, meaner, smarter, and more useful in the long run. (If indeed I can winnow down to one bookshelf...which...yeah. Fat chance.)
How do you decide which cookbooks to keep and which to toss? Or are you an inveterate cookbook hoarder who never gets rid of any cookbooks at all, ever? And would you ever toss a pages-and-binding cookbook in favor of a digital version?
By Siobhan Adcock
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