There are thousands of cookbooks on the market and it's easy to get confused about which is the best for you. It's important that you decide which type of cuisine you're interested in preparing, and of course, eating. Is it regional, e.g., Southwestern, is it oriental cooking, is it low carbohydrate centered, low fat, weight loss, for diabetic consumption, heart  healthy? The list goes on and on... Maybe it’s cuisine by a celebrity chef like Martin Yan, Emeril Legasse or Rachael Ray?

Today there are many cookbooks which you can manage on your home computer off-line, e.g., Cooking Light. Most of these programs provide you with several types of cuisine, the ability to add recipes of your own, modify the number of servings and list the nutritional content of a particular recipe. There are also many sources on-line, of course.

We like the off-line computerized versions because it leaves more room on the kitchen/pantry shelves for cooking items as opposed to cookbooks. We’ve noticed that some of the cookbooks we do possess have been used once or twice only, so they’re simply taking up space. One of these days, I’ll transfer those one or two used recipes to my laptop computer, donate the books to a local library and free up some of that shelf space…

We use cookbooks as idea prompters… They are useful for putting together a weekly menu, for example. Once we’ve decided on a menu for a week, we simply print out a checklist of ingredients needed, check the pantry for them and use the remaining list for shopping. Our experience is that having such a shopping list in our local grocery store keeps us focused and minimizes ‘impulse’ buying. That results in lower spending. For example, when shopping for two, our grocery bill is generally around $100 a week when using a list. Without a list, it’s common to spend $40 - $50 more than that…

Cooking ebooks, magazines and links to interesting cooking websites from Rob Hopcott