Culling a Beloved Collection

A farewell, a justification, a eulogy

There comes a time, I imagine, in the life of any collector of anything when she has to face her demons. She has to look into the deep, dark abyss of her habit/obsession/compulsion and decide what the point is of it all and what she is hoping to get out of it.

Or, it’s just the point when she realizes her shelves will hold no more and maybe she should make a donation.

Either way, it’s hard!

The culled

I reached that point this weekend. Here are the books I am letting go into the world and the reasons why. This is partially a review of books I didn’t exactly connect with and/or had failures with. It is also partially something I can return to should regret arise in the coming years to remind myself of why I let these ones get away.

I’ll start with some hot takes:

Greenfeast: spring, summer and A Cook’s Book by Nigel Slater

I have received a free copy of a Nigel Slater book within a month of each of my children’s births (thanks to Ten Speed Press for the free copies!), and each time I have had the same reaction: I do not eat like Nigel Slater.

Nigel Slater likes smalls plates. He believes a meal can just be a pile of greens. A snack is miso soup. He likes little piles of vegetables, some cheese, petite bits of carbs. I’m fairly certain all his salad greens tangle. If I ate like Nigel Slater, I would be very hungry and very cranky from making lots of small plates.

These are nice books. I’m sure someone out there eats like Nigel Slater (in fact, a lot of someones if his popularity is an indicator), but I do not. So, while I did hold on to these somewhat aspirationally, I am letting them go.

Flavor by Yotam Ottolenghi

I have tried, really tried, to get into Ottolenghi. I'm not sure if it’s because I missed the Plenty/Jerusalem mania, but Flavor did not do it for me. There were a bunch of errors in the recipes I tried, they used a million dishes to pull together and required a lot of time, and they just were not all that good. (I wrote up my whole experience with it here—thanks to Ten Speed Press for the free book!)

Full disclosure, I still own Simple, Sweet, and Plenty More. The first two I paid for myself, and I actually do really like Sweet. I have ambitions to get back to Simple someday, but I also had big failures from that after paying an exorbitant amount to get some harissa shipped to my house in Appalachia in 2018.

I know that Ottolenghi is a culinary trailblazer and so much of what he brought to the food stage is now all over the place because of him. I’m not taking that away. I’m still open to being wooed by the Ottolenghi world and its fervent devotees. I just haven’t experienced it for myself yet.

Also, the amount of work I put into some mediocre recipes from this book while six months pregnant makes me resent it a bit. So off it goes.

Okay, here are some less hot takes:

A Year at Catbird Cottage by Melina Hammer and Homegrown by Matte Jennings

Honestly, I did not cook anything from Catbird Cottage because I couldn’t find anything in it that seemed feasible for my life. If you’re a forager in the Hudson Valley, you may think differently. (Thanks to Ten Speed Press for this one, too.)

I bought Home Grown on steep discount many, many years ago. It might be a nice book, but I haven’t opened it since. It’s a cheffy New England tome. Not really my vibe right now and a good reminder not to just chase deals.

Lidia’s Family Table by Lidia Maticchio Bastianich and Food52 Dynamite Chicken by Tyler Kord

I like Lidia’s PBS show, but I guess I’m not really an Italian nonna in the kitchen—I suppose I’m better when nonna is translated through YouTube stars. This isn’t fair to the nonnas of the world, it is my own personal failing as a millennial.

As for Dynamite Chicken by Tyler Kord, I have never cooked from it despite owning it for six years. I guess I like boring chicken recipes for my favorite bird?

Pretty Delicious by Candice Kumai, Lighten Up Y’all by Virginia Willis, NS Skinny Suppers by Brooke Griffin

Are you having any flashbacks to blogs you followed in the aughts?

To give these books a fair shake: I actually liked all the recipes I made from Pretty Delicious, I had some pretty disappointing results from Lighten Up, Y’all, and I got Skinny Suppers for $2 to reach a shipping threshold and didn’t cook from it.

They feel like fun relics of another time, but I don’t use them and I’m ready to let them go.

Mastering Bread by Marc Petri and Claire Koop McWilliams and Josey Baker Bread by Josey Baker

I’ve established where I stand on bread baking, and it is not with an entire book of recipes that call for bolted hard wheat flour, no substitutions (Mastering Bread). I am certainly not in the bolted hard wheat flour season of life. Not only is bolted hard wheat flour not to be found in my town, it is not to be found in my state according to this book.

Yes, I know you can order things from far away places, but no one ever mentions how expensive that is when they suggest it (see: harissa in Appalachia ca. 2018, above).

As for Josey Baker, I went to his restaurant in San Francisco. I ate the expensive toast that caused a ruckus in 2014. I thought it was very good. I tried to make (cultivate?) sourdough to follow his recipes, and it turned an odd shade of grey and I scrapped it. That’s the kind of wild yeast you get when you’re in an inexpensive apartment on a short-term lease (read: dump). So I’ll just go buy the bread next time I’m in town and drop the cookbook.

VB6 by Mark Bittman, Fresh from the Vegan Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson, and My New Roots by Sarah Britton

One more controversial cookbook opinion: I don’t really like Mark Bittman recipes. I know being “the minimalist” was his thing, but I think he can take it too far. I think his vegan food especially erred on the side of austere. He has some Slater vibes, like cooking down a pile of spinach and eating only that spinach for lunch.

Also, I’ve had some disappointments from him. Does he really know how to cook everything? Can you even rigorously test that many recipes? It seems suspicious.

That being said, I am keeping two other Bittman books I own that have given me success, so I suppose I would conclude that he is a mixed bag.

As for the other books, I had good times with the vegan slow cooker over a decade ago, but it’s a bit outdated now. And My New Roots is quintessential aughts wellness blog turned book. It’s fussy, rather sparse, and even a touch scornful. I think only really worked in a time and place and not in my kitchen anymore.

Sunset Barbecue Cook Book and The Williamsburg Cookbook

Would you like a peek into the deep recesses of my mind? Look no further than the Sunset Barbecue Cookbook. I own 3 (three) copies of this book in different editions, and I thought those differences justified this choice. I was, of course, wrong. That is too many editions of one book (I keep repeating to myself by way of reminder).

And I’ve never been to Colonial Williamsburg.

Sharing Our Best by the Southeast Chapter of the Lupus Foundation and A+ Recipes by Rockrimmon Elementary School

Look, we all have to draw the line somewhere, and I guess mine has to be at regional chapters of disease awareness organizations with which I have no involvement and elementary schools I have never heard of.

I know what you’re thinking—what if you get into collecting obscure 90s school cookbooks? Will you regret this?

Believe me, I have considered that risk, and I acknowledge its validity. I am still taking the plunge.

That’s justification for most of the books in the pile. The other ones seem a little self explanatory (didn’t know the Frugal Gourmet was a dirtbag when I picked that one up—yikes).

And, kudos to me for only almost pulling two books out of my give away pile while writing about them! So far the attrition rate is zero. But no promises.