By Drew Cerino
Chances are you — or someone you know — has a worn and stained cookbook tucked away somewhere in their pantry. Or they might have a fancy celebrity cookbook sitting on a coffee table collecting dust. Regardless, our society has a big fascination with cookbooks.
Cookbook sales average roughly 20 million books a year, the fourth-largest category of nonfiction books in the United States. This seems entirely counterintuitive to me — didn’t the internet kill the need for cookbooks? Surely googling a recipe or watching a YouTube video is the quickest and easiest way to start cooking. Unless… that’s not what it is all about.
It used to be that you had to earn your stripes as a chef before a publisher would consider giving you a cookbook. We bought books by Julia Child, Martha Stewart, and Jacques Pépin because they are all trained experts. But cookbooks by Snoop Dogg? He may very well be a brilliant chef, but his culinary skills are not what made him famous.
Long gone are the days of spiral-bound, photocopied books of carefully collected family recipes and those gathered from the membership of churches, school groups, or community organizations. Modern cookbooks are slick, highly produced statement pieces for both the author and the reader. Publishers generally do not pay for the elaborate photography in these books, which means the celebrities willingly shell out $20,000 - $80,000 of their own money to add glossy, perfect images of their lifestyle. These photoshoots are long and complicated affairs. Food stylists meticulously prepare each dish and set the perfect scene, and the author is styled to perfection by a team of hair and makeup artists. “Oh this $5,000 dress? I always wear this when I cook!”
And the reality is that even when I follow a recipe to the letter, my food will never look as good as the book. Which likely means this cookbook isn’t tapping into my desire to cook but something much deeper — something aspirational. The authors portray themselves in a carefully curated (albeit unrealistic) light, and I benefit from the halo effect. Some part of my brain tells me that I can be in that celebrity’s home laughing and sipping wine with them, far from my kitchen with the barking dog, screaming toddler, and beeping smoke alarm.
If you are a foodie, this may be your version of escaping through a fantasy novel or dreaming about travel while flipping through a book about beaches in Tahiti. You think, “I want to be the person this cookbook thinks I am,” and there is nothing wrong with that! Displaying one of these books in my home goes beyond how it makes me feel. I am signaling to my visitors the lens I want them to view me through. The irony is that the celebrity author is signaling too. Surely Chrissy Teigen doesn’t roll out of bed each day with a full team of makeup artists, hairdressers, publicists, and photographers just to make her kids a beautiful omelet. However, she would like us to think this seemingly effortless and glamorous life of entertaining is also something she does all on her own. It’s rather ironic.
But here’s the fun part about all of this: No matter why you cook or what your motivations might be, Pikes Peak Library District (PPLD) has a great selection of cookbooks to inspire you. You can take them for a test drive without shelling out $50 to find out you don’t like the way your favorite celebrities scramble their eggs.
PPLD has a great selection of cookbooks to inspire you.
So if you want to emulate a star, make the best meals of your life, cook on a budget, find healthy recipes, or just want to feed your picky child, PPLD is here for you.
PPLD’s cookbooks range from all-the-rage trends to practical, down-home recipes, from how to bake at high altitude to meeting those dietary needs – vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, no dairy. It’s all here, all available with a library card, and all waiting for you. Happy cooking (or just browsing)!
