Collecting Cookbooks

It seems everywhere I look in our home I see a pile of cookbooks waiting to be read for an interesting and new recipe to try.  I pull a few off the shelves and bring to the couch where I sit with my MacBook most nights.  In between emails to CookbooksEtCetera, a group of cookbook collecting friends at yahoogroups, I like to read a little of what makes a particular cookbook unique and different to all others and maybe find a recipe or two to try the next week while doing so.  

They pile so high on the couch beside me that I have to kind of wiggle backwards as I sit down, being careful not to topple any over.  They sit there for a few days and then I'll take them back to the cookbook shelves in the spare bedroom and bring out more.  Usually they are ones that have been mentioned by one of the other collectors and I'll want to reacquaint myself with those cookbooks and see what prompted someone to mention them.  It feels like they are new again to me or that it is Christmas time and I have new presents, even though I've had many of them for years.

One of my favorites is a similar copy of a cookbook my Mother used to cook from called, "Woman's Home Companion Cookbook".  Her cookbook was black and my oldest sister inherited it from her, but when I found eBay, I also found a few copies of it for me and my other sisters.  There were 7 of us girls (and 2 boys), so it was fun to shop and hunt for more of Mama's cookbook so that all of us could have one.  The copy below is a popular one in a cream colored front with bullteted words of the recipes inside it.

Some of the recipes I tried when I first started cooking were fudge, biscuits, and yellow cake. I used to make a jelly cake that was just too easy and everyone loved it!  Even though I don't have my Mama's copy, the one I found on eBay is probably my most special cookbook in my collection of 2000 cookbooks.

Do you have a favorite cookbook too?