There are cookery books and there are more cookery books.

As far as I can remember I have  bought two new cookery book in the last 30 years, and they were from The Works or Book People. I borrow loads from the library and copy down anything that looks interesting. But  somehow I have acquired  all these books.

and a few bigger ones that I forgot about.
 So almost all these are from Car Boot sales, charity shops, or Amazon for pennies and a few have been presents.  Even Hugh's River Cottage Meat Book was from a car boot.
 But my best cookery book is this one.

 It is full of cuttings, photocopies and scribbled recipes,all in plastic pockets and this is where I look for inspiration and it has cost me virtually nothing.

At the moment I have on loan from the library these 4

.
 3 relating to TV programmes, none of which I would ever be bothered to watch.
From the Baking book I copied 2 recipes, imagine paying £20   for 2 recipes. From the Pie book, 3 recipes and the book also costs £20  and as for Jamie Olivers" jumping on the frugal bandwagon" cookbook ( £26!!), there was nothing I fancied at all. He will make yet another fortune selling thousands of these books to gullible people. I know he has given a copy to libraries but I believe there is still something called Public Lending Rights which means he gets money for each one borrowed - he's not daft is he? ( That means I've contributed to his wealth - whoops)

Cookery books are one of the biggest sellers at Christmas, yet I wonder how many get used?
Frugal cookery books are not new,  proving there is nothing new under the sun. The only difference between then and now is that in the past recipe books had more recipes in and cost less.

Here are my choice of recipe books which have some frugal recipes.

Eating For Victory is one I bought new from The Works or Book People along with it's partner Make Do and Mend.
I really should make more use of these books, but when you've been cooking from scratch for over 30 years you get to know what you like and what you cam afford.