Recipe books - can you have too many?

Recipe books have always been a source of inspiration and comfort to me. Perhaps this is from a family tradition of loving recipes - cooking and baking and food preservation have been about sustenance and creativity for generations. Some of my earliest memories are of my mom and grandmothers sharing recipes with each other, friends and neighbors.

As I moved out on my own, one of my feelings of independence was acquiring my own recipes and collection of recipe books. My recipe book collection tends to grow and then I reduce it, keeping my favorites and copying out the favorite recipes in the books that I decide to pass along. I have been wrestling with finding a more comprehensive digital solution other than the few hundred recipes I have in Evernote. There is still something so special about paging through a book and looking at great photography and reading stories from the author. I tend to skim over all the good stuff when using an online option.

A few ways that cookbooks have been inspiring me lately...

A recent podcast episode - Happier with Gretchen Rubin, episode 169 - gave me a great gift idea. In an interview with author Joanna Cole, she shared a tried this at home tip. She buys two of the same cookbooks and she keeps one at home and one at work. She uses this for a convenience strategy when she needs to plan dinner and possibly make a stop at the store on the way home. She also uses this as a gift for parents who are working outside the home. This seems so brilliant!

A friend has been making a recipe a week from Joanna Gaines book Magnolia Table: A collection of recipes for gathering. She is combining making great food with gathering great friends. What a fantastic way to build community and enjoy delicious food and feed the need to create. So thankful to know about this tradition.

For the past couple of years, when a new cookbook is released that has been on our list of "must gets," I will buy two copies and gift one to my mom. It's fun to each explore the book and then share our observations and the recipes we want to make. We are lucky that only a few miles separate us, and I can imagine that if we lived further apart that this practice would possibly be any more meaningful.

My dad is great about finding us recipe books at auctions. One of my favorite things is to flip through books, especially the compilation books that church and community groups have made. It is even more precious to find handwritten notes from the previous owner that comment on the recipe. What a treasure!