In article >,
Christine Dabney > wrote:

snipped
> After collecting all these years, and collecting to use them to cook,
> not just for collection purposes, I know which authors are good and
> are reliably good cooks. Some of the authors I have (and these are by
> no means all) are Madjur Jaffrey, Julie Sahni, Barbara Kafka, James
> Beard, James Villas, Dorie Greenspan, Paul Bertoli, Alice Waters,
> David Tanis, Rick Bayless, Diana Kennedy, Ina Garten, Richard Olney,
> Madeline Kamman, Damon Lee Fowler, Paul Prudhomme, and a whole host of
> others. Some are names that were big cooking teachers back in the
> 70s...but aren't well known now. I have a lot of vegetarian
> cookbooks...
> I can't begin to list all the books I have, or the authors. Sometimes
> I would see a book, and like a few recipes in it, and get it. I
> might make one or two things from that book, and it may be a not so
> well known author.

As another cookbook collector (>500 books and pamphlets, catalogued on a
FileMaker Pro database), I have a similar philosophy. My collection is
a working library. I have many of Julia Child's, James Beard's, Claudia
Roden's, and Craig Claiborne's cookbooks. With the exception of Alton
Brown, I do not have cookbooks by Food Network stars. My collection is
heavy on baking, vegetarian, and Asian (particularly Vietnamese)
volumes. Since we moved to Seattle 8 years ago, I've amassed several
Pacific NW/seafood books. Periodically I will cull the library of books
that don't meet my needs anymore and donate them to my church's annual
used book sale, which is where I've picked up some real prizes for a
song.

Cindy

--
C.J. Fuller

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