Dom at Belleau Kitchen, who hosts the Random Recipes blogging challenge, decided to set us a different challenge this month: to share a photograph of our cookery book collections. It will be interesting to see how many everyone has, where the keep them in their homes, and whether everyone is untidy as me! (That last one is unlikely...)
My recipe book collection has probably doubled in the last couple of years; as friends and family realise how much I like cooking and how I'm increasingly getting into baking and cake decorating, they are never short of a present idea! In fact I had absolutely no idea how many books I've got and I've just counted... if you don't include the files I've got of recipes torn out of magazines, I've got.... 72 cookery books! That's enough recipes to probably cook something different every day for the next 50 years!
My books are on a kitchen worktop -just to the left of the books (which you can't see in my picture) is my oven and just to the right (next to the cake stand) is my sink. You can just see the bottom of my kitchen windowsill in the right of the picture as well.
My books started out in a nice neat row along the wall at the back of the worktop, but have now spread to a second row. At the front is a book stand that I got at a car boot sale, holding open a book at the page of the last thing I made. On top of the back row of books are three A4 box files from Paperchase - I love the Russian doll pattern as it reminds me of a brilliant holiday to Moscow - which contain recipes I've printed from the internet or torn out of magazines. There are a couple of small notebooks stacked up as well, where I used to copy recipes out of magazines, but I just don't have time to do that any more.
In front of my books is a ceramic decorative word saying "cake" that came from Next, and a flat cake stand (one of several that I have, but the only one that I have room to keep on display); on top of the cake stand are four decorative knitted cakes from Bombay Duck. I think that's everything... as you can see, I am rapidly running out of space for any more books!
I thought I had a lot with 46 books, this means I can expand!
ReplyDeleteI had no idea I had this many books, it was a real surprise when I counted them! And I probably use the same half dozen books over and over... I ought to dig into the rest!
DeleteYey - someone else whose cookbooks are threatening to take over! Mine are colonising the living room...
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I kind of feel like cookery books should be in the kitchen - even though there isn't really much space for them there! Still, I keep telling my boyfriend that when he moves in we need a bigger house :-)
DeleteI keep mine in the kitchen on the worktop where they're easily accessible - and I have Kate Shirazi's Baking Mad too!
ReplyDeleteMine are on the worktop but mainly because there's no space anywhere else!
DeleteLooks like you may need to invest in some proper shelving there Caroline! I love the haphazardness of it all. Just how a cooks mind should work. Thanks so much for entering and I think you have taken part once before... anyway, hope you take part next month too! Love from sunny Spain x
ReplyDeleteThere's no room for shelves, Dom! There is a cupboard right above the books - you can just see the bottom of it at the top of the picture. In fact my kitchen has built-in cupboards all the way round so there is nowhere to put any shelves - and my bookshelves in my bedroom are overflowing! But there is no such thing as having too many books :-)
DeleteLove it! me too - sooooooooo many cookbooks and I love them all!
ReplyDeleteMary x
Love the haphazardy style randomness of it, and yet I bet you know where each and every book is when you need to cook something quickly.
ReplyDeleteSue xx
Great display of cook books, I love the haphazard storage, i'm sure you use them all the time. GG
ReplyDelete