Why I Love Collecting Cookbooks

I love my cookbook collection. One of the most fun and useful hobbies I have is collecting cookbooks. It's fun because browsing my cookbooks have brought endless hours of fascination, discovery, and experimentation in the kitchen. Of course, collecting cookbooks is incredibly useful because my husband and I get to eat the "fruits" of my labors. I say, I love it because I shared this hobby with a dear friend, Kelvin.

My cookbook collecting behavior didn't actually start out as a hobby. I mean, I didn't wake up one day and say, "Gee, I think I'll start collecting cookbooks." It was more of a natural process borne out of my initial interest to learn how to cook. I got my first cookbook as a wedding gift in 1971. A red-covered 3 ring binder with pie-shaped pictures of food on the front, my Betty Crocker's Cookbook has been and still is one of my most-used cookbooks. Pages that have gotten accidentally ripped out, dividers with the typed category label partially torn off, and an errant hand-scribbled recipe on scratch paper stuck between the pages, ah, now that's a cookbook.

Eventually, my tastes in cookbooks changed: rather than "store-bought" cookbooks, my next cookbook binge would be locally made recipe compilation cookbooks. First, I purchased the "Caterpillar Girls' Club Cook Book" from a friend who worked at the local Caterpillar plant. With 264 pages of hand-typed recipes and no pictures, this cookbook had the best recipes for "Saucy No-Bake Baked Beans" and "Sloppy Joes." To this day, I have these pages marked and make these recipes at least monthly.

The next compilation cookbook I got was the "Illinois Plumberette Cookbook" by the Women's Auxiliary. Then came the "Mt. Zion United Methodist Church Cookbook" followed by "Simple Pleasures--Junior Welfare Association" from the town where I lived at the time. Years later, I would contribute several of my own favorite recipes for inclusion in a cookbook called, "Children's Home: Recipes from Our Home to Yours."

After moving into what my husband and I call "the house on the lake" several years ago, I met Kelvin and his friend, Dan--our next door neighbors. Kelvin was a gourmet cook. He's the first and only gourmet cook I have ever known personally. He introduced me to the finer things in the kitchen and the cookbooks. He had a cookbook collection unrivaled by anyone I had ever known. He had, "The Joy of Cooking," and all of Julia Child's cookbooks. He simmered sauces and served beautiful desserts. His entrees were always unique and the tastiest ever.

The first time we browsed his cookbooks, I noticed something quite unusual. He marked in his cookbooks! He made notes, he made corrections, he made substitutions! His quirky scribbles were scattered all over the pages. How quaint, I thought. I'd never seen anybody do that before. Our friendships grew as we shared time and meals together.

One day, my husband and I were invited to Kelvin's home for dinner. He said it would be, "something simple". We arrived to tasty hors d'oeuvres, as always. Then, the salad. Then, the entrée--it was chili. Different than any I'd ever had, it was chock full of beef chuck roast simmered to perfection.

But the gem of the evening was when he pulled the heated saltine crackers out of the oven! Piled high in the middle of a cookie sheet was a mound of crackers, all warm and crispy. He wrapped them tightly in a table napkin and passed them to us. My husband and I, with wide eyes of surprise and delight, ate those warm saltines like hungry children, slathering butter all over them. I wondered, did he get this idea out of a cookbook?

My husband and I later moved away to another state. Although we kept phone and e-mail contact with Kelvin and Dan, I visited them only one time after we moved. And what did we do? We browsed through those cookbooks, discussing recipes we'd cooked recently. He allowed me to watch his preparation at dinnertime but wanted no help when he was in the kitchen. That was okay with me because I knew that this was an idiosyncrasy he'd always had. Also, I knew that when he was done cooking, we would all sit down to a meal much prettier than any picture in any cookbook. And the flavors would be, hands down, divine.

Last year in March, my husband and I received the devastating call that Kelvin had passed away. Saddened beyond words, I turned to my cookbooks to console me. I read Italian recipes, Mexican recipes, and Martha Stewart recipes. I clipped rough edges off recipes I had taken from the newspaper years ago. I thought of Kelvin and his cookbooks and sitting in his kitchen.

About 3 months later, I received a large, heavy cardboard box in the mail from Dan. I couldn't lift it! My husband grunted as he lifted the box onto our dining room table. Carefully, we cut the top of the box and opened the flaps. And what do you know--there they were.

Inside, were several of Kelvin's cookbooks. Can it be? That I am touching Kelvin's very cookbooks? The ones we browsed together and talked about in his kitchen? Now, they were here, in my kitchen. I couldn't end this story without telling you the names of some his cookbooks that now belong to me. They are the most cherished additions to my cookbook collection to date:

---Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking
---Williams-Sonoma Taste: Recipes for Entertaining
---The Best of Czech Cooking, Expanded Edition
---San Francisco A La Carte: A Cookbook
---Carluccio's Complete Italian Food
---Chinese Cookery

As I perused their pages, I saw Kelvin's notes everywhere. I read every recipe addition, every substitution, in every cookbook. His hand was here and here and here. And suddenly, I realized, that he is here, too, in these cookbook pages with me. And this is why I love my cookbook collection.