I really love cooking. This is a good thing since, like lots of people, I have to do it every day.

Most days, I produce something reasonably interesting that is also vaguely edible, although I confess that sometimes dinner ends up on the table in auto-pilot mode: A selection of whatever happens to be in the freezer, served on a bed of something that I found in the fridge and sprinkled with something else from the back of the cupboard.

I especially love cooking for other people. Turning out a meal that will make them gasp with amazement. Admittedly sometimes their reaction is more one of hysteria or just plain horror. But as long as I get some reaction at least, then I'm happy.

My love of cooking means that I'm a compulsive collector of cookery books. I've just counted them - see, real research for those of you who think that I just throw this thing together. I've got 67 different ones.

These are arranged into three groups: books I have for show (to make people think I know what I'm talking about), tatty books I have because I need them (so when I forget if I should be using plain or self-raising flour I can check), and finally: cookery books that border on the pornographic (so I can just sit and ooh and ahh over the pictures of lots of things I know I'll never make).

The tatty books are of course all hidden away so nobody knows they exist.

The show-books just sit and look impressive on the shelf: Elizabeth David, pristine next to gleaming copies of Nigel Slater and Antonio Carluccio.

The cookery-porn lies shamelessly around the house. Just in case I need a fix - and I do - regularly.

Until today, I've never given it a thought, but given that most of my books have at least a 150 recipes in, I calculate that's over ten thousand recipes in the house. Admittedly there might be a little duplication, but even if that took out a couple of thousand, we are still left with enough recipes to cook a different meal every day for over TWENTY ONE YEARS!

How many recipes do I actually use from these books each year? About seven.

Mostly I just cook things that I know by heart. Or I just make it up as I go along, keeping my fingers crossed that it will taste like it did in the restaurant.

So going back to the maths for a moment, at my current rate of usage, I've got enough recipes to last until mid-July in the year 3156.

What have I just ordered off the internet? A really good book of cheesecake recipes. You never know, I might use it one day.

GGMM

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