The first book I published was a 488 page cookbook called Gayle’s Legacy. It was for my family, who I had left behind in Northern California when my husband and I moved to Houston to pursue my career. As a result of this rather sudden move, my kids and family found they no longer had our house to go to for all the holidays and occasions that were celebrated with family parties. And they couldn’t rely on me to bring certain favorite dishes to special celebrations. That resulted in many long distance calls asking for recipes, advice and help in preparing favorite dishes. In a fit of madness, I decided to write “the book” for them.
Truthfully, if I had realized how much work it was I would have never attempted to do it, but I broke it up in little pieces and before long I had the majority of it done, so then I had to finish it. Anyway, that’s over and done with, what I wanted to talk about today is whether or not that book, and in fact cookbooks in general, have outlived their usefulness.
My daughter told me the other day that no one wants to buy cookbooks any more as they are no longer necessary. She says any time she or her husband need a recipe they merely Google or Bing it. They get oodles of choices and they pick one.
Frankly that shocked me. Isn’t that like asking a stranger on the street their opinion of one of your life decisions? How valuable would that opinion be? I can understand using the internet if you’re researching a certain recipe or a variation of a recipe, but making a meal from an unknown recipe, that seems very risky.
I told my daughter the value of a cookbook is asking someone (or a book) you trust for the recipe so you will feel confident in investing the time it takes to make it and the cost for ingredients in an unknown entity.
Am I old fashioned?
For instance, if I get a recipe from Eldon Brown on the Food Channel, I know it will be good, it will explain just how to make the recipe, it will even explain how the ingredients break down to develop into the finished product, but it will be complicated, and take probably four times as long to make as I want it to take.
So I might look at his recipe but most likely I will not follow his recipe.
Some recipes don’t explain the process or at least not in a way that I can easily follow. Some recipes only list ingredients and no ‘how to’ instructions. Before I wrote my cookbook, I had several shelves of cookbook but only about four books that I consistently used. Now I only use my cookbook, because I included all of my favorite recipes and I even wrote down the ones I kept in my head so I don’t have to think about how to make the recipe, I just follow what is written.
Last September I formatted and loaded Gayle’s Legacy on Kindle so now it can be purchased in electronic form. Now when I go into the kitchen, I take my Kindle and select the recipe in Gayle’s Legacy I want, change the font to large and go at it in my own kitchen. I find it so simple to cook that way and I enjoy the stories and pictures all over again.
So if I’m redundant, I’m enjoying it.
And my daughter just emailed me to ask me to mail a signed copy of Gayle’s Legacy to a friend of hers. She does that all the time because her friends rave about the book.
Redundant? I don’t think so any time soon. So get out there and get a copy of a good basic cookbook and use it. Better yet, buy a copy of my cookbook and make us both happy.
