In total, counting paperbacks, 400+, an office wall and a kitchen bookshelf, including all of my mother's, some of which date from the 1920s. One shelf are in French, Spanish and Italian, the only three foreign languages I can read (mostly). Most come from "remainder" dealers, book sales and second hand outlets.

The best and most interesting are from urban "Junior Leagues" and similar organizations in the US South, with the same true of a segment of the "Church Cookbook" market, Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches and Reformed Temples, again in the South, along with cookbooks from rural "ethnic" parishes, both Roman Catholic and "Old Denomination" Protestant. Affluent Southern women, especially those born before 1940, are more likely to be serious cooks or "preservationists of tradition".

Now that a wider variety of Asian produce has become available, I use Asian cookbooks and the Asian recipes in some of the US collections more and more, while of US traditions, the multiple and intensely interesting cuisines of Louisiana could keep a cook busy for many, many meals.

The cookbooks are gradually separated into a three categories...."Unused and likely unusable", "Used, some often", and "Need to Use - Keep in sight!".

Several decades ago, for 5 years I reviewed restaurants on a weekly basis for the newspaper in a mid-sized city. After that many bad or unsatisfactory meals, I felt a need to know why....