Cookbooks that is. Probably not. I was looking through my cookbook collection and trying to decide if I just need to pack some away. Could I actually bring myself to do THAT?? While perusing these various volumes of tasty goodness I started thinking about how much cookbooks had changed over the years. I pulled out my Mom’s old Better Homes and Gardens from 1945 (when she got married) and started browsing. I pulled out my newer version of Better Homes and Gardens. There was so much difference between the two I had never thought about.In the 1945 version, while there are quite a few pictures, they are almost totally Black and White. There are just a very few color pictures and they are not very good. The newer version – 1996 – actually has very few pictures, but they are all color and much better quality. All in all this probably doesn’t mean much considering that 1945 is more than 60 years ago and they were lucky to have color pictures at all in the cookbooks of the time. Some of my older ones have no pictures at all. The recipes are just as good, but I don’t have nearly as much fun looking for something new in those. “Yawn!” So what is the reason? I would guess that back in the ‘Old Days’ it was the recipe that was important. Now, it’s more than that. Much more! Have you really looked at the cookbooks. Really looked. They are so pretty. The pictures are glossy and detailed and glamorous (which sometimes makes us think that our cooking is a failure because they NEVER look exactly like the pictures). I know, they have a whole new field of photography now – food sylist – and the photographers are good. This is from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook. Now who wouldn’t want to bake something if it was going to look like these. Even when there is an ‘accident’ they look delicious!! How visual! How inspiring! I would much rather cook out of this book than my Mom’s. Black and white is so, well, dull. That’s the point, isn’t it. Would I have bought my newest cookbook, sight unseen, if it had not been for the yummy!!! photograph on the front??

Doesn’t look nearly as enticing in B and W, does it?? I would not have bought it. We have become such a visual society when it comes to food everything. My 83 year old Mom likes to buy dessert cookbooks. She enjoys cooking, but doesn’t do much anymore. I asked her why she still buys the cookbooks. Her answer was simple. She likes to look at the pictures. She buys mostly Chocolate Cookbooks and never cooks anything out of them. She just likes to read them. Can you imagine your Grandmother, or Greatgrandmother saying that. “Silly child, why would you want to read a cookbook?”

And I am like her, to a certain extent, I love to look at the pictures while I am finding something new to cook. And even TWD is more fun to think about when you have a picture of the chosen recipe to look at. Wish I had been in on THIS one.

Double Crusted Blue Berry Pie - July 2008

Double Crusted Blue Berry Pie - July 2008

Am I right?? Of course I am. Anyway, just some of my thoughts.