I don't understand why more people don't have one.
It's a long-standing joke in my family that my mother cooks on top of her cookbooks. She'll find the recipe she wants, lay it open on the counter, and then proceed to cook in and around the book in such a way that, by the end, it is usually covered in onion skins, carrot peels, flour, and butter wrappers. I've even seen her place a mixing bowl directly on the paper.
Not surprisingly, after all these years of abuse, her cookbook collection is in very rough shape. Pages are stained, rippled, and torn. A good example is the original Canadian Living Cookbook that she bought in the late '80s and passed on to me recently. You can see it in the picture below, with 30-year-old food dried onto the paper! It's almost a fossil.
© K Martinko -- This is what happens when you don't have a cookbook stand!
