I’ve been using a cookbook holder [like this](http://www.stacksandstacks.com/html/10599_cookbook-holder.htm) for as long as I can remember. I used to have a really huge one, but it broke, and I had to replace it with an annoyingly small one because I couldn’t find a big one for sale. Aren’t we supposed to be supersizing everything, people?
What do you do when you’re using a cookbook in the kitchen? Get sauce on it? Scan/photocopy/Google and keep the book out of the kitchen? Something fancy I don’t know about?
For some reason I usually (acidentally) leave the book in another room and hurriedly walk back and forth before i realize how dumb I am.
My wife actually uses a laptop in the kitchen, which scares me to death. I keep looking for the “do not drop into a bathtub” sticker that should be on there.
I stick the cookbook over on the table, away from the counter I’m doing the actual work on, and then jump back and forth when I forget whether I had just read 2 tbsps or 4.
Not exactly the most efficient, but it keeps the book mostly clean and I have too much paper in my way already to want to photocopy anything.
The book holder thing looks slick but I don’t think we’d have spare counter space for it in front of me anyway.
Walk down Ballard Ave… about 3 or 4 stores south from what used to be Collective is a great window with cookbook holders in it. They are huge and bright colors. I don’t even know what the store is called, but those cookbook holders call to me every time I see them. If only I had a kitchen big enough to use them.
Most of my recipes come from the computer. We had a tablet in the kitchen for quite a while, but now just use it in the living room and walk back and forth or one of us cooks and the other reads from the couch.
How can you tell if the recipe is any good if it’s not liberally bespattered with multiple layers of ingredients? The thickness of the layers is the easiest way to judge the relative merits of a recipe at my house.
I don’t like getting anything on my cookbooks, and I don’t like to crack their spines (enter a Sister Snicker). Generally I’m just careful about not dropping anything on them–I hardly ever do–and I mark my place in them with a big bottle of vinegar or something that I hope is going to keep the book open without cracking the spine (usually the book closes itself anyway).
It’s funny you ask, because just a few minutes ago I printed out my Standard Bread Recipe (it was in an email from a friend) and stuck it to the refrigerator for handy reference. It now joins Biscuits as a recipe I have available in the kitchen all the time.
I am a total heathen who does not care about damage to my books in any scenario. I prop open my cookbooks with whatever’s handy: a corkscrew, a disposable pen, an onion. I crack the spines until the pages fall out. I consider food stains a mark of pride.
For recipes on our wiki, I just bring in my older laptop and plop it right next to the mise en place and hope for the best.
If it’s a book, I’m with Liza, I just prop it open with whatever and don’t worry about anything short of a full soaking.
If it’s a single page (magazine, printed from the computer, what have you) then I put it in a plastic 3-ring binder sheet protector and I often tape it to the cabinet so the words are at eye level.
When I’m finished with it, I pull it down and stick it in my 3-ring binder. It’s also easy to wipe clean if it gets messy.
I have a nice one from Crate and Barrell, but I tend to forget I have it and leave the book on the table and go back and forth until I put the book away on the bookshelf next to the holder and say, “doh!”
I copy the ingredient list and extremely abbreviated instructions onto a small notepad I have set aside just for this purpose. Then I make notes on what worked, what didn’t and what I would change. There’s no way I’m taking a $160 pastry book into the kitchen.
I say if you pay $160 for a book, it should be able to repel stains, water damage, and anti-tank shells.
Misty, at our old place I had some sheet protectors taped up, and I keep meaning to do it here as well–thought when I say “our old place,” we lived there 2.5 years ago.
One thing I’ve noticed is that for any given recipe I want to make from a book, someone has probably copied it onto their blog, and I can bring that into the kitchen. I mean a printout.
At a junk store in Wisconsin, I found a homemade(?) wooden yellow duck with a clothespin for a beak. I think it was designed to hold those “from the kitchen of…” recipe cards that all grandmothers have. It sits on my stove and I’ve used it maybe twice. I am generally of the Melody and Liza recipe-splattered school of thought.
We have a printer that also copies, so when we’re having a party we photocopy recipes and tape them to the cabinets with painter’s tape (non-marring blue tape). For day-to-day use, we are nearly always using recipes we’ve printed out in the past, or working directly off the laptop screen.
I use the same book holder for my school books and my cookbooks. I bought it at the bookstore at my college, though I am sure they sell them at Barnes and Noble or Borders. It isn’t big, and it doesn’t seem to be sturdy, but it does the trick, it’s easy to put away and it holds open books of all sizes.
Does it come with those two virile young people?
That’s just marketing. In all honesty, the guy’s arms have gone numb from not having to hold up his own books.
Get sauce on it. I have also been known to burn them.
on…cookbooks? or on virile young arms?
On cookbooks. :-)
the more spots on the book, the better.
It’s like scars, they show experience, tell a story
@ Susann: So that’s what the duck I made in 6th grade shop class is for! Finally, a use for it after all these years ;-)!
@Frantic Foodie: I agree completely :-)
I have an old music stand with the little wire things on it to hold back pages which I use to hold my cookbooks. I also have metal cabinets in my kitchen whose only redeeming factor is that I can stick printouts to them with magents.
For the recipes that I use the most: (banana bread, chocolate chip cookies), I have the recipe cards taped on the inside of my cupboard just above where the dry ingredients are kept. I realized that I only use a few recipes from large cook books, so I think I will tear those out and recycle the books. Purge, purge, purge!