I have probably a couple of hundred cookbooks, but I rarely look up a recipe. I did originally have a theme for the collection. It was church group cook books or other small run, sort of home made ones. Then there were the oriental books, then I just started getting any I could find. Mostly from yard sales and the "Take-It-or-Leave-It" area at my local dump. I love to cook, but rarely have the patience to follow a recipe, unless I am making something very unusual. But I don't think I have 3000............yet

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My grandmother collects cookbooks. She likes the homemade ones, especially ones from ladies' groups or church groups. She says that those cookbooks have the best recipes because they are tried and true. Very easy to buy gifts for her!

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I think a lot of it depends on how you use your cookbooks. I have about 70, and I think I can safely say that in any given year I open and reference at least half of them, but never for a full recipe. I think a lot of people (myself included) use cookbooks as a springboard for ideas -- to get the creative juices flowing. If I'm going to prepare an Italian feast, I'll pull out my eight or nine Italian cookbooks and just kind of flip through them to get my mind going. I'll occasionally use a technique here, or a seasoning mix there, but it's exceptionally rare that I'll bring a book into the kitchen and refer to it while cooking.

Of course, if you have 3000 cookbooks, I suppose that means that the inspiration phase is going to take at least 27 times longer than the actual food preparation, but I suppose there's some benefit to knowing that when you get that craving for the foods of Catalonian royalty or Argentine fishmongers, you're still going to have a nice range of books to refer to :-)

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I thought it was cool when John Peel had to reinforce his house because he had too much vinyl, but moving even in part because you have 3,000 cookbooks seems excessive. I can't imagine using even a fraction of that even throughout my entire lifetime.

Thankfully recipe websites and the iPod (not to mention my empty bank account) have prevented me from ridiculously indulging in either.

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3000 cookbooks is a lot, maybe too many, even for me who owns this collection started55 years ago.Currently it is difficult to cull the collection, since most were added for specific possibilities. The collection comes out of the need to know, and when there seemed to be a scarcity of readable cookbooks...Grew up poor without any books at all to read.In new england it seemed like getting good recipe was rare and people were unwilling to part with their secrets or even to teach their skills.Kammans book cost one dollar and hat got me started on my "educatered phase."With five childen and a husband on a career path, cooking was all in all, a way to live, study,provide,travel,entertain,teach,write,ponder,wonder, support farmers markets locally, support outreach programs to help others reach their goals. The cook books are sort of like friends, always there to guide and counsel.SL

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I loved hearing she had 3000 cookbooks, good for her. I'm at just over 450 myself and I love to collect them. The one's you find at the used book stores or at garage sales are the best. I think the thing I like best is they are real pieces of time, to see how much things have changed. Some of the recipes in the old books I have would be hard to make now, try and find some of the things they call for. Not as easy as you may think. I plan on add to my collection for a long time. Maybe someday I can say I have 3000 also.

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