The Toronto Public Library is an under-appreciated food resource, in my opinion. Every amateur cook I know complains (half-heartedly) about their over-filled shelves of cookbooks. Each collection includes several cookbooks received as gifts or bought on impulse that might have been used a couple times but now just gather dust. Like other books, cookbooks are part of the growing trend of digitization but because a kitchen isn’t the most Kindle-friendly environment I think they still have relatively more utility. Why buy and shelve a cookbook when it can be borrowed and taken for a test-drive for free?
Seasonal or holiday cookbooks are particularly good candidates for a planned library borrowing session. References for project cooking like Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie are probably worth a spot in the permanent collection, though. Some of these experiments can run longer than the three-week borrowing period and popular books tend to be un-renewable. The library’s website (link: http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/) allows patrons to search the collection and place books on hold (for pickup at any of the library’s branches) from any computer.
Right now my food-related checkouts are: Mouth Wide Open: a cook and his appetite by John Thorne, 200 Easy Homemade Cheese Recipes by Debra Amrein-Boyes, Mediterranean Street Food: stories, soups, snacks, sandwiches, barbecues, sweets, and more, from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East by Anissa Helou, French Country Cooking by Elizabeth David, and Corked: a memoir by Kathryn Borel.
