As I went through our very crowded dining room, in an attempt at babyproofing, I came across our cookbooks. I already paired down our cookbooks to two baskets a few years ago. So really didn’t remove much out of the baskets this time. There’s a grilling cookbook, which I purchased for my husband a few years ago. (It still looks pretty brand new.) There’s also a Joy of Cooking cookbook, couple of Pampered Chef cookbooks, a Betty Crocker Cookbook, and a few others. Some were purchased at yard sales and Goodwill, others were given to us as gifts and the Pampered Chef ones were purchased decades ago when I was a consultant.

I don’t cook extensively. What I do cook are very simple recipes. I totally regret not hanging out in the kitchen with my Dad and Mom growing up. It would have been nice to have learned how to cook all the yummy foods I grew up on. For the most part, nowadays, I utilize websites like www.allrecipes.com and www.cook.com or I just simply use Google.

The cookbook pictured above, Joy of Cooking, looks pretty worn and used but I can admit it wasn’t used much by me. I think my husband purchased this during my “Hamburger Helper” and Tuna Helper” days in an attempt to get me to learn how to cook healthier and more nutritious meals. I can gladly say I have graduated from cooking boxed meals.

Anyway, my tip for this post is… if you haven’t already checked out http://www.allrecipes.com, please do so. It is such a great site. I love that there is a way to save the recipes you are interested in. Also, all of the recipes have a rating system and most have great reviews. It gives you the chance to see what recipes have been tried and were successful for others, before trying it out yourself.

I know we have a lot of friends and family who love using their cookbooks but honestly, I don’t know why we are hanging on to our cookbooks. Decoration? Maybe we’re saving them in case we have an outage or lose our internet for some reason. Then at least we’ll have recipe options.?

How many cookbooks do you own? How often do you use them?

By the way, apparently the Joy of Cooking is still in print. Wow! The first edition was printed in 1931. Our copy was printed in 1962. It must be a good cookbook. I guess I really should open it more than once every 5 years.