Confessions of a Cookbook Hoarder

I inherited quite a few cookbooks from my mother and grandmother when they downsized homes. So I have been lugging them around from apartment to apartment the last twelve years.

I should explain that my family is a food loving, former restaurant owning, chinese buffet attending, food-is-life-and-love philosophizing, Filipino family. We read cook books from cover to cover, even ingredient lists. If you've never eaten dinner in a Filipino home, you should know that holiday meal spreads are always massive and ritually photographed and that this is a tradition that predates all the crazed food photography that happens today. 

If this is the first post you've ever read of mine, you might not know that I am steadfast regarding certain principles on life and near the top of that list is: Use what you have and have only what you use.

So...

In hoarding these books I am breaking a serious personal rule because I don't really use them. I love them, but I tend to go straight to the internet for recipes these days. And after having kids I don't really try new recipes, we are in a solid routine and don't stray far from the kid friendly and the easy and quick.

So, why? Why must I keep these books? It's partly sentimental. But mainly it's that for books, I simply have a weakness. For food, another weakness. For books about food, I am hopeless.

Do you have a weakness for keeping books you don't read?