"COOBOOKOLOGY"

A New Feature From "The Grease From My Spatula"

Photo by Alfred Kenneally on Unsplash

I am addicted to cookbooks.

I mean, I am seriously addicted to cookbooks.

It all started so innocently when I began my culinary career. First it was a couple of little book with some interesting pasta recipes. Then I found a Betty Crocker book on cake decorating. When I was in culinary school, I had to buy “The New Professional Chef”, an encyclopedic cookbook that will suck you in like a culinary vortex as you spend hours just looking at the culinary possibilities. And I could never forget the day, I walked out of Barnes and Noble with “The Escoffier Cookbook”. How could one chef so meticulously create so many recipes. And these few cookbooks were just the start.

I have always loved books, and upon graduating from culinary school, I would always spend my days off at book stores, and libraries browsing through the cookbook section looking for culinary inspiration.

Being on a limited budget, I wouldn’t buy too many books though. But soon after I married my wife, I discovered other more economical places to buy cookbooks: garage sales, thrift stores, and used bookstores. By frequenting these places, my cookbook started growing, growing and growing. I bought the whole 1971 Better Homes and Gardens Encyclopedia for 50 cents (the lady who sold it to me didn’t think it would ever sell). I found a 1964 ”La Gastronomic” for $1.00 (what a steal). Browsing around an unassuming garage sale, I discovered “The Marlborough Cookbook.”

A good friend of mine who was also a chef sold me a large portion of his cookbook collection for $20.00 which included the Time/Life World of Food series (another steal).

And so for the last 35 years, I have collected so, so, so many cookbooks. You cannot walk into any room of my house without finding a bunch a cookbooks on a shelf or in a cabinet. And it doesn’t end there. I have a good number of cookbooks outside in my art studio. At my kitchen at the Pi Beta Phi sorority, I had to create some shelf space for more of my cookbooks.

When people find out that I am a somewhat serious collector of cookbooks, people will just give me their cookbooks. One guy that I knew gave me a cookbook from 1917. A number of people have just shown up at my house with a box of cookbooks that need a good home.

You might ask, “How many cookbooks are in your collection Steve?”. I have never really “officially counted them, but in my estimates I guess that I have over 1,000 cookbooks.

Over the years, I have been trying to think of a fun and informative manner in which to share my cookbooks, and talk about them, and really analyze their contents; not only from a culinary perspective, but also in cultural, historical, artistic, and literary perspectives.

After starting this Substack page last spring, I realized that this is the perfect format to talk about and my cookbooks. Then like a bolt of lightning, the title “Cookbookology” came to mind. In doing a quick Google search, I realized that nobody has laid claim to the word.

So coming soon, I am excited to launch “Cookbookology”, a blog about cookbooks and what lies within them.

P.S. With this being a brand new venture, I would love and appreciate any input, advice, or comments that you might have. So feel free to leave a comment below