Cookbook Village is there to feed a habit

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I’ve got a bad cookbook habit. And that’s putting it mildly. Not the new ones, so much, probably because they all come in the mail. That’s just too easy. It’s old cookbooks that capture me. The ones I have to hunt for. For years I made a weekly visit to Long Beach’s much-missed Acres of Books.

That’s been gone for more than a year now, and I haven’t found anything to really take its place, though I still am irresistibly drawn through the doors of any used book store and head directly to the cookbook section (marine life and agriculture are good, too, though!).

All of this is a long-winded preface to a website I just stumbled across called Cookbook Village. It seems to be just as crazy about old books as I am. I’ve got an entire shelf filled with signed first editions of my favorite authors. They’ve got a flickr galleryof signed frontispieces and dust jackets. And so it goes.

There’s a blog about cookbook collecting that’s a lot of fun to page through and in November the website announced that it will soon start selling books (it already has an EBay store).

This could be trouble.

ALSO:

Stocking stuffers: Colorful mugs from Karikter

Sugar cookies from the ‘Holiday Cookies’ e-book

Recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen

--Russ Parsons