Cindy Fuller wrote:
> In >,
> Christine > 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
>

I have a lot of Asian cookbooks. I was most surprised to see that
there are several Cambodian cookbooks that I had never heard of.
I looked them up, and they run about $100 each. I suspect that
folks on the West Coast may see more Asian cookbooks than we do

I am curious about your Vietnamese cookbooks. I got one in the
70s and have gotten a few since then. I was going to say that I
have not seen any particularly esoteric books, but last year I did
get a trilingual one published in Vietnam. I also have one in
Vietnamese, which I thought I could somehow translate. Nope.
Maybe I'll do some experiments after I get moved and get my books
organized.