The Cookbook Shelves


About us

We’re a food blog about making use of
every one of your cookbooks


Welcome to the Cookbook Shelves. This started as a little family idea at the start of 2021. We’re a family that loves cooking, and for that matter, cookbooks. We have what most people would consider a lot of cookbooks. We have some that we’ve never cooked from, some that we use regularly but always for the same recipes, some we’ve not used for years. The idea was to cook a few recipes from each cookbook on the shelves—one book per week, as many recipes as we felt like. We also thought we’d involve some of the other members of our wider family in a WhatsApp group called “The cookbook club”.

So why do this?

  1. Give us the chance to try more recipes,
  2. Try recipes from books we’ve used many times before; but usually for the same recipes,
  3. Share recipes with our wider family.

Having done this throughout 2021, we felt it was time to share what we’ve been doing and see if more people are interested in the idea. We decided to change the name from the CookBook Club (our family name for it) to “The Cookbook Shelves”.

We’ll be posting two or three weeks at a time of what we’ve done to catch up. Some of the posts are short, some a touch more verbose. The order of the posts is in the order that the books are on our shelves. One of our shelves, pictured above has “random” shelf heights so there really isn’t much of an order to the books on our shelves.

Please feel free to comment, or let us know if you do something similar or would like to.

We’ve included a link to each cookbook on Amazon, so if you feel like buying and trying what we’ve made, the links are there.

We’re looking forward to hearing about your cooking adventures along the shelves!

  • Kitchen diaries 2
    The Slater Strikes back! I do love this book and its predecessor. Sometimes when you are lacking ispiriation, its lovely to be able to open a book on the day of the… Read more: Kitchen diaries 2
  • I want my baby back ribs
    Our book was by The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater. We cooked Ham and Butter Beans followed by English Apple Cake. The ham was a lovely warming affair with a tomatoey sauce,… Read more: I want my baby back ribs
  • Coq Au Vin
    Food for Thought, Alain Murchison. I was given this book by Alain at a food festival in Ludlow. We’d gone for the weekend and had a fabulous dinner at Mr Underhill’s –… Read more: Coq Au Vin

New update posted weekly – sometimes 🙂

4 responses to “The Cookbook Shelves”

  1. Marcus Avatar
    Marcus

    What a great idea Jez. Looking forward to following along and maybe even trying a few out!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. bluesmanjez Avatar

      Thanks, Marcus, please do and let us know how your own experience goes.

      Like

  2. Lisa Avatar
    Lisa

    Wow! I knew you guys were doing this but this is extra special. I’ll be reading every single blog! We copied this brilliant your idea. Thanks for the inspiration 😁

    Liked by 1 person

    1. bluesmanjez Avatar

      Thanks Lisa – so cool that you are doing the idea too! I’m looking forward to hearing what you cook.

      Like

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