Eat Your Books

Do you know how many cookbooks you own? Above is what my kitchen bookshelf looked like only a few months ago. The photo at the bottom was taken over a year ago. This is only about 25% of the total cookbooks I own. I rotate the cookbooks on this shelf according to the ones I use the most, so they are the most convenient. The shelf changes depending on what new cookbooks I have and also varies by season. You will see that some have a permanent home on the kitchen shelf. The truth of the matter is that until very recently I rarely used my cookbooks for every day cooking. Sure, when I first purchase them I look through them and cook a few recipes, then they go back on the shelf. The problem is that the internet is so much more handy when it comes to finding a specific recipe. Although I love my cookbooks and would never have given them up, I just didn't find them useful for finding something for dinner. Even though I have a couple of cookbooks specifically for that task.
My internet recipe habit has lead to extreme cookbook guilt. Why have all these cookbooks if you aren't going to use them, I ask myself? Well, thankfully I'm not the only one who must be having this problem. A couple of months ago I signed up for a new service called Eat Your Books, I mentioned them back in July in this post. I initially signed up for the free trial, but after entering only a couple of my books I realized what a valuable tool it was going to be and paid for the full year subscription. You see, you can search all of the cookbooks you own just as you would for a recipe on the internet. You find what you are looking for an then pull the book off your own shelf to get the recipe. Not to mention I can tell you that I own 143 cookbooks that contain 20, 487 recipes!
I am still using the service and my cookbooks regularly. About a week ago I was having a late night craving for chocolate chip cookies. The thing is that it was late and the idea of scooping out endless cookies and cooking several batches did not sound all that fun. Sometimes I want to bake, other times I just want to eat cookies! So, I typed chocolate chips, nuts, and bars into Eat Your Books and came up with a great recipe for Congo Bars, essentially chocolate chip cookies without all the work (don't worry, I'll post this recipe soon). The recipe was in a very small book that would be lost in the shuffle normally. If this had been a few month ago I would have immediately looked for a recipe on the internet.
Ok, so why would I be telling you all of this? Well, I honestly believe it is a great product and wanted you to know about it. Also, the more people that use it, the better it becomes as there are sections to review the recipes you have made with other readers. Plus, I really don't want it to go away.
***The giveaway that was originally associated with this post is now complete. Thanks to all who entered and congratulations to the winner. The winner has been notified and has accepted their prize.

Full Disclosure: The views expressed in this post are all my own. I contacted Eat Your Books to ask them if they would like to offer a giveaway on my site. They in turn offered to provide a lifetime membership to the winner of the giveaway.
In addition I was personally offered a free lifetime membership and they have also offered to link all my recipe posts from cookbooks in the review section of their site. I am thrilled to be accepting both offers.