Cookbooks...

Cookbooks in my kitchen take up lots of space...so much that I had to buy a new bakers rack to help store some of them along with my collection of mixing bowls. I once counted in excess of 50+ cookbooks and that doesn't even count the books of recipes that I have cut out of magazines.

Cooking has always been a big thing in my family. My "Gran" was a really good cook...she baked for years in a local bakery and worked until she was way up in years, at a local restaurant baking pies and cakes. Of course she passed this talent along to her only child, my mother, who is also a wonderful cook. On my dad's side of the family there was Aunt Ruby who cooked many favorites for our family throughout the years...so I come by my love for cooking through all of them.

We all collect cookbooks and recipes...its just something you can't resist...! Gran and my mom cut recipes out of magazines for years and probably didn't try that many of them as they never organized them very well. After Gran's death, Mother and I found recipes everywhere ...all through her house. She had boxes of them...under the beds...in the closets...in drawers...stuffed in her recipe boxes. Mother had lots too...but she and my dad moved to town from the ranch several years ago and she went through all of hers and threw many of them away. I am just as bad as the two of them....I run off recipes from the Internet and cut them out of magazines too. I try to keep them organized in large notebooks but there is no way ....even if I started tomorrow....that I could try all of them ...even if I cooked day and night ....until I die!

My cookbook collection started when I was rather young...with a cookbook that I got for Christmas one year. It continued when I got married and since then has grown. It includes the traditional Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and The Good Housekeeping Cookbook. Then it varies from there...from Le Cordon Bleu at Home and My French Kitchen to a collection of Gooseberry Patch cookbooks.

A dear friend gave me a copy of The Congressional Club Cookbook during the 1980's from a trip she took to Washington D.C. that includes recipes from previous Presidents and Vice Presidents, Governers, Senators and their spouses. The Texas Cookbook which was written by Mary Faulk Koock who owned a very popular restaurant in her home, Green Pastures, in Austin. It is a fun cookbook to read as there are many stories and recipes from Texas personalities and their towns and ranches from barbeques to banuqets all around the Lone Star State.

One of my very favorite is Helen Corbitt's Cookbook written in 1957. Helen Corbitt was a wonderful cook with an interesting career that began in New York her home state at Cornell Medical Center and eventually brought her to Texas where she was Instructor in Foods, Catering, and Restaurant Management at the University of Texas, the Houston Country Club, The Driskell Hotel in Austin, and Neiman Marcus in Dallas.

I have, Flavors, a cookbook from the Junior League in San Antonio. Under The Mushroom from The Little Mushroom a restaurant popular in the Market district in Dallas during the 1970's-1980's. Then there is Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Bread cookbook that has wonderful recipes for every type of bread you could imagine. The Big Book of Breakfast Cookbook that is a complete source of yummy recipes for all breakfast foods. The Pepperidge Farm Cookbook by Margaret Rudkin whose family started the Pepperidge Farm empire.

Then there are the celebrity chef cookbooks...I love Paula Deen and have several of her cookbooks. The Barefoot Contessa at Home is one of my favorite cookbooks and another, Mexican Kitchen, by Rick Bayless. I have an autographed cookbook by Stephen Pyles from a cooking class he instructed at Central Market that I attended several years ago and of course...Martha Stewart Cookbooks.

There are many more cookbooks I would love to own...but I don't need!