The beginning

I like cookbooks - I've probably got about 30, and I probably use half regularly. I love Nigella, Nigel, and Delia, though I could detail their various failings and annoyances. The first Leon cookbook, the first Moro, and the Silver Spoon are also regularly consulted. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Fish book stopped me from dithering at the supermarket before walking away fast muttering 'Oh, they're all too endangered'. You get the idea - big names, familiar authors, conservatively used. I cook for my husband and children ever night, but I'm not stuffing my own turducken over here. 

My Dad is different. He must have several hundred, crammed into my parents' modest 4 bed terrace. They arrive from Amazon, from boot sales, charity shops, the Book People, the library (substantially out staying their loan period). New books, old books, great books, shockingly crap books, which could put you off eating at all. One thing unites them - they don't get cooked from. Flicked through and shelved, they sadly show only their spines, their potentially life-altering deliciousness trapped between their pages. I think it's some kind of OCD, but let's not dwell. 

This blog will attempt to smuggle one book out from under my Dad's nose each week, review it here, and cook at least one recipe from it. So they might have some purpose before my Dad dies and we ship them all off to Sue Ryder.