Do you love to read recipe books?

[Andi73]

Love Recipe Books - checking out different ways to use ingredients - it's always an adventure.

[Alexjonson]

Yes i really liked to read recipe books a lot. Right now i also reading the book on food recipe by Sanjeev Kapoor. I love to make food with difeerent creativity and innovation, trying to use the many different ingredents while i am making the food.

[annaszpak]

Sometimes. I have a lot of allergies and I'm a pretty picky eater, so it's nice to get some ideas to add some life into my diet.

[lady_charlie]

Does anyone else have a driving need to eat the food in the book they are reading?

I read Scarlett (sequel to GWTW) and ran out and bought an Irish cookbook - Amy Tan, ran out and bought a Chinese cookbook. Playing for Pizza, learned how to make several new Italian dishes. Like Water for Chocolate...well, I wasn't sure how that would work out, given my relationship record.

[Bighuey]

Sometimes. I once read a story by Mark Twain, I forget which one, where he describes in almost a full page a country farm dinner. I could have eaten the book.

[Carla Hurst-Chandler]

LOL! Remembering Steinbeck's description of cornbread squares on a dinner table cut into squares, dripping with butter and then smeared with a thick layer of blackberry jam. Sounded so good I tried it...and STILL to this day eat it that way at the end of supper (for afters) if we have cornbread with the meal.

[FNAWrite]

I find somewhat amusing those posters who say 'No, I don't read cookbooks because I can't cook.' The restatement of that principle is 'I can't cook because I don't read cookbooks'

How many quadratic equations did you do before that first high school algebra book?

On the other side, I disagree with those who say it's like reading a novel.

I enjoy reading cookbooks and have quite a few. I don't love reading cook books.

I noted eslewhere that I buy the vast majority of my books used. In the 'old days' when my limit for most books was .50, the only books I would pay a dollar for were cook-books.

[Asherat by the Sea]

I'm so glad I spotted this topic! I thought, perhaps, I was the only one who sat on the sofa surrounded by three or four cook books/recipe books and so figured my guilty secret might as well stay between me and my husband (and cats). What a relief to find out that other people actually read them cover to cover like I do!

Some of my favorite cook books are less 'recipe collections' and more 'learning to cook through the experiences of others' if that makes sense. Take Paula Wolfert (a great favorite of mine); her books contain a huge amount of knowledge, amusing experiences, trials and failures as well as ingredients and cooking technique. Also, she goes into detail about where to and how to acquire the ingredients one needs for the recipes in her books---which is pretty helpful when you have no idea what on earth a 'cardoon' is and where on earth you can find one! Some cook books frustrate me to no end when they list a huge array of strange/unusual/endemic items and absolutely no information on what or where you can find them.

My new passion at the moment is smoking and curing. I've bought three or four recipe/how-to books on the topic and am eagerly awaiting the fall so I can put my new knowledge to use! Interestingly enough, smoking meats for preservation has been in human culture since (early estimate) 500BC---but many of us today have lost the knowledge and inclination to do these type of things ourselves. I am sincerely loving the trend towards 'homesteading', 'whole living', and a return to hunter-gatherer lifestyle. 'Course, this is easier for us in the frozen northern Alberta region than those living in urban areas. In any event---thank you for the topic Eminenz CW! I enjoyed reading it.

Cheers for now,
~Asher

[bookaddictedartist]

I use to buy cookbooks but never used them. I found going online and reading reviews and seeing photographs was what pushed me to use recipes. With the creation of pinterest I now make new recipes a lot, I think because of the photographs and reviews. I also like to see what people have used in substitute for another ingredient which is something a cookbook does not usually have.

[zeldas_lullaby]

I read woodworking books with furniture plans in them, which is very similar to what you all are talking about except they show how to create a specific piece of furniture rather than a certain meal or dish. In fact, I call the plans "recipes" because of a vocabulary-related mental glitch I have. Your "new ingredient to use" is my "new technique to use." It is a great way to learn about anything, really!

Oddly enough, with cooking, I kind of wing it. Trial and error, I guess.

[Amrita Bhuyar]

i love to cook and hence i love to read recipe book

[signets]

I personally do not like to read recipe books. However, if someone does, I have nothing against them.

[Phoenix98]

I'm so glad I spotted this topic! I thought, perhaps, I was the only one who sat on the sofa surrounded by three or four cook books/recipe books....

Actually, you are, Asher. Normal people do not read about food, they eat it. The posts you are seeing are by trolls who hack in.




-- 01 May 2013, 23:42 --

No laughter?

I shoulda stuck with tap dancing.

[Donnia]

I like to read them for recipes but this past Christmas my husband bought me a recipe book by a famous baker in Seoul South, Korea and the recipes are easy to follow and very colorful.

[rekha123]

Sanjeev Kapoor ones! And other Telugu recipes too...Indian Cuisine ones too...