Bring a cookbook to morning tea and suddenly everybody at the table has an opinion.
- Matte paper looks nice for about five minutes, but don’t put the book anywhere near where you actually cook. Drops and splashes look very nasty very quickly.
Dr. Libby sucks all the joy out of life.- Reading a cookbook without intending to cook from it is fine. In fact it is officially A Big Thing.
- Close-ups of the food in its raw state do not count as an illustration. We know what dirty potatoes look like – we want to know what the finished dish should look like once we’ve cooked it.
- Beige is big but it’s not appetising.
- One man’s meat is another woman’s poison. Paleo Pete‘s bone marrow broth may be the basis of the Paleo diet, but the very idea induces deep shudders in non-followers. Bone broth in a baby bottle is even worse.
Cookbook writers should just take drugs to help them recover from their rare diseases. Modern medicine is a wonderful thing. Why bring food into it?- If you write a cookbook all your friends have to be good looking. Those who aren’t can have their arm appear at the edge of the picture – but only their arm.
- All your dogs also have to be attractive. Cats can’t be in cookbooks due to their habit of sitting on the table or lounging in the dishdrainer.
- All your table cloths have to be retro. Also your china. Nothing should match. Useful if you live in Christchurch.
- Your garden can be overgrown, but in a good way – grass long enough to attract a council fire hazard notice telling you you’re in for a fine in the real word is picturesque in cookbook world.
- Assemblage is O.K. – wrapping a bread stick in a bit of ham with some rocket sticking out the top counts as cooking if it’s in a cookbook.
- Nut butter is vile.
Are you infuriated by any food fads? Please share.
Christchurch City Libraries Blog 
“Reading a cookbook without intending to cook from it is fine. In fact it is officially A Big Thing” – this is pretty much the *only* way I read cookbooks 🙂 The last one I enjoyed was Cairo Kitchen.
I agree healthy cookbooks never feature in my kitchen. I have to have good pics but the next most important is the ingredients. If there appears to be little or no flavour it gets the big flick. Slow by Alyson Gofton is going to get a good work out now that the weather is cooling and my appetite warming.
I hardly ever actually buy cookbooks – they are often just re hashing other recipes, much easier to borrow from the library, flick through and choose the one or two that appeal.