About
I created this website because I love cooking, baking, cookbooks, and food. I grew up watching Julia Child on PBS, even now I spend way too much time watching the cooking shows on PBS and the Food Network, and my family gives each other cookbooks as gifts (to the virtual exclusion of all else). I also love buying cookbooks on the internet because there’s a much greater selection of cookbooks available online than in brick and mortar bookstores, and because you can get much better prices on the internet as well. Unfortunately, you can’t actually look inside a cookbook you find online, you can’t review the recipes, you can’t look at the pictures — until now.
The purpose of this website is to provide its readers with detailed information about the contents of the reviewed cookbooks, including a list of all the recipes included, information about the appropriate user for each cookbook (beginning cook, intermediate or experienced cook, culinary students, etc.), a small sampling of the photographs from the book’s interior (just so you can get an idea of its “look” and visual appeal when deciding whether to buy a cookbook), and pricing information for the various retailers where you can purchase (or in some cases, rent) the cookbooks. If you like a cookbook, I’ll try to provide a list of similar cookbooks I think you might also like. In a few cases, I might even offer new copies of the cookbook for sale myself (I used to be an eBay powerseller — selling cookbooks, of course — and while I don’t sell much there anymore, I still have quite a bit of inventory, and access to my old wholesale resources.)
I plan on providing advice on how to get the best possible price for cookbooks — I like to get the most for my cookbook dollar, and I’m pretty good at it, and I hate to see other people pay more than they have to for cookbooks. I would also like to provide a section with links to interesting cookbooks that are being published in the future, as well as (eventually) a section with links to interesting cooking videos online. Additionally, if you want to provide your own review of any cookbook you have used or own, or have any questions about the reviewed cookbooks, please, please, please feel free to post comments. I’d love to hear from you: how you like a particular cookbook, what you think of this review site, what more I could do to add to it to make it better for the readership.
As of December 1, 2009, the FTC is requiring bloggers to divulge whether they are being paid or receiving gifts in kind in exchange for product reviews. Let me reassure you that I am not being paid or receiving gifts in exchange for reviewing any cookbook, giving any cookbook a positive review, and no one but me is deciding which cookbooks to review and what to say about them. If I think a cookbook is wanting in some respect, I’ll say so, and if I think its fabulous, I’ll say that, too: I will always give my honest opinion of any cookbook I review. Every cookbook I review was either purchased by me, given as a gift to me by a relative or friend, or in some cases, rented by me, or borrowed from the local public library. None of the cookbooks I review were provided by a publisher or retailer.
Affiliate links are included in this website, in part because I wanted to have legal permission to access to the retailers’ graphics, links, and content, and in part because I would like to at least recoup some of the expenses with registering the domain, creating, hosting and maintaining this site, as well as the substantial amount of time it takes to type up all the recipes for each cookbook, take photos, do the HTML coding, create and set up the pages, etc. These affiliate links make absolutely no difference to you, they don’t increase your price, however, if you do click on a link and go to a retailer’s website, in some circumstances I may get a small commission from the online retailer on the sale. If you like this site and want to help support it, please consider either buying a cookbook from me, or making your purchases through the links on the site so I can earn an affiliate commission. If you are not comfortable with that, please feel free to use the website as much as you like, just don’t make any purchase if you click on a retailer’s link.
