Thursday, April 6, 2017

A new cookbook and the start of a serious cull

Today I bought my second cookbook of the year ('Gather, Cook, Feast', it looks good), it's sitting next to me whilst I eat my third smoked mackerel salad in a week and wonder where my enthusiasm for cooking has gone. Buying it was also the final bit of encouragement I needed to begin the process of going through my books with a properly critical eye and starting to clear some out.

Starting with the cookbooks was obvious, I completely ran out of shelf space in the kitchen months ago (there are Christmas presents still looking for a home) and I'd got to the point where it felt like I couldn't find anything. I've pulled out 6 books to go. It might not sound like much but it represents about 25cm of shelf space, which was enough to find a place for everything else, and suddenly I feel a lot better - it doesn't always take very much. I had never cooked from 5 of them, not used the 1 I had cooked from (once) in years, and need to question why letting go can be such an issue.

If I was being really ruthless I could get rid of more, and maybe I will, not least because I hope that a few less books will encourage me to use the remaining ones rather more. Cooking has always been something I've really enjoyed but for the last year or so it's begun to feel like a chore at times. There are a whole host of reasons for this, a lot of it's a work pattern that gets me home around 9pm a couple of nights a week, and then has me back at work by 8am the next day. It's energy sapping, and I'm learning the hard way that the older I get the less energy I have.

Suddenly the effort of thinking sufficiently far ahead to have the neccesary ingredients ready to cook something interesting or new when I do get home at a sensible time seems like an effort to much - hence packs of smoked mackerel and salad even on days off. It seems there's also a point when a wall of cookbooks becomes overwhelming rather than inspiring to me.

But for a natural hoarder, and book lover, getting rid of books isn't easy. There are the books which might have been gifts where it feels positively disloyal to discard them. Books bought with good intentions that make me feel I've failed by not embracing their contents with more enthusiasm. Books that represent hard earnt money that apparently I wasted because I never used them and now they're going. Most ridiculous of all there are the couple of Nigella titles that make me feel like I'm letting down the woman herself when I admit I don't really want them. Because I think she's great, even mentioning that her books are on the pile feels oddly disloyal, but when I flicked through them nothing appealed to me - so why do I feel like this?

If there are so many books that just looking at them leaves me paralysed with indecision though (only a little bit over dramatic), then there has to be a cull until the whole lot looks manageable again. Small flats are no place for the sentimental or indiscriminate stockpiling of unnecessary clutter. There will always be space for the books I use, love, and really want, just not for all the books I currently have. I do the same with mugs. That has to stop too.

12 comments:

  1. I recently got rid of years and years of issues of a cooking magazine. That made me feel guilty enough. I wince when I look at the shelf of cookbooks and realize I only use a few. I should get rid of some but it is so hard to admit defeat.

    My husband is the one with the mug addiction....

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    1. Mugs are hard to resist, a cup of tea or coffee from whichever one I'm particularly pleased with at the moment is one of life's small pleasures. There are piles of cookbooks I don't use a lot but which have some sort of meaning or which I find inspiring even if I don't open them often, or which are good reading in their own right and I'm happy to sit on all of those. It's the ones picked up without much thought that I never use and which don't have any nice associations or particularly inspire me that should go. Isn't it ridiculous that it's so hard to clear this stuff out though.

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  2. Nan has left a new comment on your post "A new cookbook and the start of a serious cull":

    So beautifully written. All of us who love our books, cookbooks included, find it hard to get rid of any for the same reasons as you said. I have an Emeril cookbook my daughter gave me in the years when he had his shows on the food network (bam!), and I will never part with it, even though I make only one recipe from it. It means so much that my girl gave it to me, and it reminds me of fun times watching him. Stuff like that. It's important.

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    1. It is important, and definatley a nook to keep. The vast majority of my books are well loved, even if not always well read, and are going nowhere, but there's review copies of things I know I won't read again, duplicates of stuff that I should have remembered I already have, and bits bought in places like The Works that were to temptingly cheap but that I'm unlikely to ever read. They can all go.

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    2. Book. Why this iPad hates the word book so much is beyond me, but it's always trying to change it to hook or nook and I don't always notice in time.

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    3. It even buggered up definitely!

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    4. Yep, and though it should let me edit my own comments, for whatever reason at the moment it won't.

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  3. Had to laugh at the mugs. I'm a sucker for mugs - but nowadays I only buy bone china ones, which means I won't even go near most on offer... there's a suggestion for you. Besides, tea DOES taste better from thin bone china.

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    1. Ahem, confession time... I probably have about 20 Emma bridgewater mugs bought my stay at the factory shop, some have been presents. There's quite a lot of cornishware - maybe 8, various sizes. I have 6 avenida mugs that I love, some deberoh sears Isis cups bought as seconds (so lovely) a Lovejoy mug (I love lovejoy) with Ian McShane doing the full mullet on it which is one of the best presents ever. 6 beautiful bone china cups with saucers in the most sublime shade of turquoise that look as thin as eggshell that dad gave me, maybe a dozen or more assorted bone China cups saucers and cake plates picked up of markets, some delightful satsuma ware coffee cups (espresso sized I guess) and some Spode coffee cups (factory shop again) and more Emma bridgewater coffee cups that came with candles in.... please come round for tea! You can have it out of bone China and made in a variety of tea pots.

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    2. I have two mugs, both bone china made by Noritake, white and blue, so pretty.

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  4. I believe a collection need only cause concern when there's nowhere to put the stuff. I've just culled about 20 cookbooks myself - a job that has been needing doing some time but only got done when one of the shelves collapsed! I must say once the stuff has gone I never regret it. It does help if you have children flatting - always a good opportunity for a clear out (get rid of the old and buy new nicer stuff)!

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