The Shelf: A Reckoning

I suppose this may not seem like a lot of cookbooks to an actual cook, but cookbooks tend to be rather expensive and for a dabbler, I have no business having so many. There are a bunch more on my Amazon wishlist and, um, the mighty Veganomicon is on its way to me right now. But that's the last one! I will not buy any more cookbooks until I have made substantial progress. So here's the list and my opinion of each, which is not based on much.

• The Ayurvedic Cookbook by Amadea Morningstar (O RLY?) and Ursula Desai [Really helpful and lucid advice on Ayurvedic eating practices, but the recipes seem a little boring to me. Perhaps because I'm a Pitta and supposed to avoid garlic, onions, salt and all hot spices. Oh noes!]
  
• Essential Vegetarian Cookbook by Diana Shaw [A big fat book with lots of information and tips and what seem like fine recipes.]
• Grill It! Vegetarian ed. Anne McDowell [I think I was feeling left-out at summer barbeques or something.]
• Japanese Vegetable Cooking by Asako Tohata [I love Japanese food!]
• The New Laurel's Kitchen by Laurel Robertson [This just seems like such a nice book. Baking bread, making your own soup stocks, mac and cheese for the kids, etc.]
• Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home [It's Moosewood!]
  
• Moosewood Restaurant New Classics [An old roommate of mine had this cookbook, which started my mad rush to buy more Moosewood cookbooks. I actually made a handful of things out of here which turned out quite well.]
• New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant [I've only made one thing out of a here--a mixed vegetable curry. It involved toasting and grinding whole spices and the result was delicious. I don't know if it was the Moosewood or the fresh spices, but yum!]
• Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant [Haven't made anything. But it's full of fish and cheese, boo!]
• Real Vegetarian Thai by [This was a gift from my beloved Glittahface and it's full of amazing things. The only trouble is that REAL thai cooking is very time-consuming and involves lots of ingredients. And I have this problem with not being super discriminating. Which is to say, I made the green curry paste from scratch and cooked the curry and it was hella delicious, but was it 1000x better than curry paste from a jar? Mmmm, not to me. But I want to try more things!]
• Vegetarian Times Cookbook [Bit of a battered old thing. Haven't perused it much.]
• Vegetarian ed. by Nicola Graimes [A sort of ridiculous, generic book full of lovely pictures of vegetables. I don't particularly trust the recipes.]
• Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison [I read so many good things online about this book that I had to buy it. It's intimidating. It's very large and heavy and the recipes seem sort of fancy and I'm sort of just scared. And she really likes butter and cheese?]
• World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey [Awww, I love this book. This was my first cookbook! And when Glittahface and I lived together, we actually cooked quite a bit, so we've made a number of things out of here and almost all of them were delicious. And there are so many more recipes in it!]
• How It All Vegan! by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer [Another book much lauded online. I was a tiny bit disappointed, but I should actually try the recipes, I suppose.]
• Vegan With a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz [Love love love the PPK and so why haven't I tried more recipes out of here? I'm starting here for sure.]

And now it's dark outside, so I better get to the grocery store and get cooking!

[Addendum: After taking this photo, I stacked all the books on my desk. A day later, Mark walked in, stared at them for a minute and said, "You have a problem."]