Author Rebecca Sparrow once told me about her fetish for cookbooks, and how they are secretly her porn.  She buys them and fantasises over each page while stuffing her face with potato chips and watching Dr Phil.

I too, have spent many hours drooling over delicious-looking cookbooks (not Dr Phil) only to  squirrel them away in the cupboard to collect dust, or proudly displayed them in the kitchen without even owning one single ingredient of that amazing-looking hot pink thai cookbook – sound familiar?

Yup, I am sure there are a lot of us out there who are guilty of owning cookbooks that we have never actually cooked from.

Then let me tell you about a new campaign that Danielle from #bakedrelief has launched, finding homes for such cookbooks, the homes of families in the Lockyer Valley who lost everything in the January 2011 Queensland Floods.

Anyway, I will let Danielle tell you all about it in her own words, from her #bakedrelief website:

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Lets just say you love cooking and creating in the kitchen and you lost all of your cookbooks during a flood or cyclone.

As I have around 100 cookbooks collected over many years and some from my grandmother, I would be very upset if they were gone forever.

I know we can not replace the sentimental aspects of this loss, but what we can do is bring back a small ray of cooking hope!

Have a good look through your bookshelves and pick out a cookbook or two or 10 that you no longer use but would love to see go to a home cook who is longing for something to inspire them again.

If you are able to become a location for drop off of books, please email me on digella@bakedrelief.org and we can arrange those books to be transported out to cooks who need them. Otherwise, the current drop off locations are:

Up until the end of May 2011, you can drop off  your donated cookbooks to the following locations:

Treasurer Wayne Swan’s Office – 1162 Sandgate Road, Nundah

Victoria Lenton (Baked Relief) – 31 Percival Terrace, Holland Park

Or send them to:

Danielle Crismani  – PO Box 3175  –  Newmarket  Qld  4051

NB: Please good quality cookbooks ONLY (no children’s books, fiction, other nonfiction or magazines are required) Think – Is this a book I would like to receive? That should be the guidline of what you donate. You would be surprised at the lack of quality and broken goods which are donated. These people deserve better than that!

Also, if you have TOTAL favourite heloom recipes which you would love to share with another cook, please email them to: soniac@ctaspley.com.au

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So please dig deep, and donate one (or more) of your beloved cookbooks, or go and buy one to donate to a flooded family!

Please forward (emailers), retweet (twitterers) or share (facebookers) this post onto any friends, families or contacts who might want to give to this appeal – thank you!