My 2010 Cookbook Spreadsheet and Cookbook Recommendations

Perhaps some of you will remember from last year (January 26, 2010 blog) that I keep a spreadsheet of all my cookbooks and write the date next to the title every time I use one of them. At the end of the year, I can analyze which books I’ve used and what type of cooking I’ve done the most. All of this is really quite fascinating to me but perhaps you are not as engaged as I am. After all it’s what I’m eating, not what you’re eating. Bear with me.








Over the course of 2010, out of a total of 543 cookbooks, I used 86 of them, 32 for the first time. I prepared 218 recipes from these 86 cookbooks, 14 from magazines, newspapers, cooking classes, or the internet, 86 from my blog, and 36 of my own devising, coming to a total of 354 recipes.

This information tells me that I am still quite wed to cookbooks in the paper form, ones that I can crack open, check the index, scribble notes and paste photos. I’ve begun to use Epicurious and Big Oven apps on my IPad, sending myself emails of interesting recipes, but those numbers are still really small. The 86 from my blog are those recipes I am getting ready to post and need to photograph, as well as those I just love and “keep” using again and again.

I cooked 43 recipes from West Coast and West Coast Wine Country cookbooks, 34 from cookbooks featuring European or English food, 28 from the Healthy or Vegetarian cookbooks, and 21 from the Quick cookbook category.

I used FARMfood a whopping 18 times. This is a beautifully designed book, published by Indiana University Press. Daniel Orr is a Hoosier (from Indiana); I’m a Buckeye (from Ohio). So at our roots, he and I are neighbors—and I feel that every time I use his cookbook. He ventured away to see the world and to learn to cook but has now returned to Bloomington, Indiana and has opened a restaurant, FARMbloomington, which supports local farmers and ranchers by buying their produce. His recipes are really good.

I used The Illustrated Quick Cook and Martha Stewart Living’s Everyday Food: Great Food Fast a combined 15 times. I love spending time in the kitchen, as most of you know, so speed is not my highest priority. But I also realize that it is for many of you and I’ve been trying to find great quick recipes that are tasty and fun. Both of these cookbooks meet that criteria. There are also lots of good photos.

Aloha Days Hula Nights came in at 12 times. This Junior League cookbook from Honolulu is truly marvelous. I took it with me to Hawaii over New Year’s 2010 and used it a bunch at the beginning of the year. There is nothing slick about it. Just good recipes, well tested, and delicious.

Without Reservations came in at 10 times. I took Joey Altman’s cooking class at the Ranch in 2009, bought his book with few expectations and found it to be totally admirable.

I would highly recommend any of these five. I would love to know if any of you has tried them and what you think of them.

My 2010 Dinner Spreadsheet

I have another spreadsheet which I don’t think I’ve told you about before. You know that I write in a small dinner journal every night, noting what I’ve eaten for dinner and any wine or other beverage. On the left are a couple of pages from my 2010 journal. (Most pages don't have photographs.) I put the basic information month-by-month on a spreadsheet, see below, so that I can calculate at the end of the year how many dinners I’ve cooked at home or when traveling, how many times I ate leftovers, had guests to dinner (and who they were), ate in restaurants or had someone (bless them) cook for me. It’s really interesting to see the results. Or at least I think so.

Sorry this isn't clearer, but you get the idea.













Here are the numbers for Berkeley or Sonoma:
Guests came to dinner 39 times
Cooked 98 times (137 including for guests)
Ate leftovers 73 times
Ate in restaurants 47 times
Purchased prepared food and brought home 1 time
Friends cooked for me 15 times
Shared preparation for dinner 10 times

And here are the numbers when I’m traveling:
Cooked 9 times
Ate in restaurants 53 times
Friends cooked for me 12 times
Shared preparation for dinner 8 times

So during the course of 2010, I ate in restaurants 100 times (27%), cooked and ate my own food 219 times (60%) and had friends cook for me 27 times (7%). Six percent for everything else. Pretty interesting, don’t you think?

Noting a Life: Dinner Notebooks

When the group from First Congregational Church of Berkeley and I arrived in Spain from Morocco, our first stop was Marbella. I knew the name immediately from Chicken Marbella which is one of my favorite dishes, originally from the famous Silver Palate Cookbook. You’ll find the recipe below. But I had always called it Chicken Marbella—like Mar-bel-la. To my surprise the city’s name was pronounced Mar-bay-a. So now I know, Chicken Mar-bay-a.
















We spent one night. I didn’t eat Chicken Marbella—in fact it wasn’t on the menu. But I can tell you exactly what I did eat at Bar California: salad with carrot, tunafish, tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, and onions and poured my own oil and vinegar. Then I had Shrimp Pil-Pil which is shrimp in boiling hot olive oil and garlic served in a small casserole. A Barbarillos (white?) and a Rioja (red) to drink. Then we went off to a bar and I ate Cuarent Tres, which means 43, almonds from Catalonia, and Poncho Cabineros, a spicy liquor, which I loved. Please correct my Spanish.

The reason that I know exactly what I ate is that since 2004 I have been writing down my dinners (and on trips all three meals) along with important information like where, with whom, what and the cookbooks I used, wine, etc. I put the information in little 4 x 6-inch notebooks which are easy to take along on a trip and to restaurants if I think a meal may be worth recording in detail.

At the end of each month, I put this information on a spreadsheet, clearly a throw-back to my 16 years as an administrator at Duke University. Then at the end of the year I tally it up. Here’s what it looked like the first year 2004 and the most recent year 2008: Cooked dinner for guests 46/38, Cooked dinner for myself or myself and Katherine 80/84, Ate leftovers 84.5/63, Take-out 0/4, Out at restaurants 50/57, Out at friends 23/17, Out shared (mostly holidays) 3/6, Catering 4/0, Traveling (mostly restaurants) 75/97. They each add up to 366; I don't know why. But close enough.

There is no real reason for recording my dinners in this way. I think originally it seemed like a fun project—and I love projects. I do occasionally go back, as I did above, and check out what I ate on a particular date, like Saturday, March 20, 2004.

Sometimes I think that I am providing a future graduate student with a masters thesis on what a white, middle-aged, middle class, woman ate between 2004 and whenever I decide to stop.

But mostly I like to keep track of my life. I call the bookshelf that holds all these notebooks and others you will hear about at another time Noting A Life.