You buy socks because they are practical. You buy bath towels because they are practical. And sometimes, you buy cookbooks because they are practical.

But many times, we buy cookbooks because they look appetizing, or as you flip through them in the store, one or two recipes inside sound good.

If you are like me, you buy the cookbook with the best of intentions. You are going to try something new or adventurous. You are going to try cooking healthier or complicated. Or more simply, you are going to try cooking at home more often, rather than supporting all the fast-food restaurants in town.

I admit that there are several cookbooks on my kitchen shelves which have never been used other than to ooh and aah over. They have pretty pictures and recipes that sound really good.

And if I have one ingredient I want to use up, it's easier to sit down at the computer and search the Internet for that perfect recipe rather than flip through book after book.

And so the vast majority of the cookbooks sit and gather dust.

If you do cook, whether it's a tried-and-true recipe or something new, you likely grab your favorite, old stand-by of a cookbook.

You know the one. The cookbook which automatically falls open to the recipe you've cooked hundreds of times. The cookbook which drops a few torn pages every time you pull it from the shelf. The cookbook which has more than a few pages coated with splatters of grease or eggs or sauce.

In my house, our favorite cookbook falls open to the recipes for pancake and waffles, which are coated in enough batter to likely cook a few individual pancakes or waffles.

Along with the ready-to-use cookbooks, the other recipe book which is used regularly in my house is an assemble-as-you-go recipe book. It's held up well since it was received at a bridal shower, but is starting to show wear and tear.

Inside, it has my most prized recipes, from those given at the shower by my friends to those childhood favorites passed along by my mom.

All of the recipes which have been granted special residency in this cookbook are tried-and-true. There's little chance you'll make one of these recipes for a potluck and return home with a full dish.

Lesson learned the hard way: Do not try a recipe for the first time when the item is going to be consumed by people outside of your immediately family.

 

Of course, kitchen shelves are not only lined with both used and unused cookbooks, but also recipe boxes -- the junk drawers of the cookbook world.

Ironically, one of my recipe boxes is also a wedding gift. And while it's still in use, it's not as useful as the recipe book. It too has become a "junk drawer" on the cabinet shelf.

Sure, all recipes boxes begin use with the best of intentions. They are going to hold onto the recipe clipped from the newspaper that will be tried at the next potluck. Soon, that recipe is crammed to the bottom below three other potential potluck recipes. Before long, the lid won't close and none of the recipes sound appealing any longer.

The problem is that it's hard to find anything in a recipe box. Recipes that I might want to try get folded up and placed inside, only to be discovered months later.

Occasionally, I'll sort through the box in search of a recipe I remember cutting out. As the hunt begins, recipes that make me wonder why I cut them out in the first place are quickly discarded. Others which I realize I'll never make, even if they were pasted to my kitchen counter, are next into the trash. And another pile forms of those recipes I still might like to try in the future.

At this point, those recipes should get organized in a recipe book. But that time wasn't allotted in this search process, so the recipes are just crammed back into the box, only to be discovered yet again at a later date.

And the box is resituated again on the cookbook shelf, only to gather dust until I search frantically for that long lost recipe at a later date.

 

-- Ronda Graff's favorite cookbook is "How to Cook Everything," which includes everything from chicken noodle soup to toast, yes, toast.