THANKS to kind inquirers (as new parents used to say in the birth announcements). The new kitchen is realising my dream.

With luck and a following wind, we should be nearly shipshape by now.

In the grand sort-out which preceded the chaos, it was clear I was harbouring too many recipe books. Those going into the designated new cupboard would have to earn their space.

The survivors are battle-scarred warriors, thumbed, grease stained, watermarked and, for a few, barely hanging on to their bindings.

Two still respectable items are that way only because their predecessors, long out of print, fell to bits and I found secondhand replacements in decent nick.

At one stage, I invested in one of those transparent plastic stands for an open recipe book but it took up so much precious worktop space that I returned to balancing whatever I was using on top of the bread bin or propping it up behind the pastry-board, with the inevitably messy results. That plastic holder earned its place - in the jumble box.

So what's survived? Every Women's Institute book, from Yorkshire's in 1949 (inherited) via Yorkshire in the Seventies and North Yorkshire West, post-reorganisation, to a couple from Durham and two notepad-sized collections from Cumbria.

They earn their keep for down-to-earth contributions to everyday meals, cake stalls and coffee mornings and, with the exception of the oldest, have two invaluable assets: spiral binding and wipe-clean covers.

One or two collections published for good causes survive because, when people contribute their own recipes, they work.

Non-survivors include one which, after I'd bought it, turned out to be almost entirely recipes from this column, under the contributors' names.

Then there's the Be-Ro book. Four editions of it and still one of the cheapest (and best) introductions to home cooking. Never throw an old one away; the recipe you rely on will have been edited out of the new version.

More battered than most is the family heirloom, handwritten, hard-backed exercise book. Even if I'd never made them, I'd savour the names: Miss Tilsey's dream pudding; Lady Portarlington's gingerbread, and Brigg Vicarage yeast cake.

In my own equivalent book, many entries were first tried out for this column and became family standbys: Mrs Whitehead's curd tarts, Yvonne's magic sponge, and the most popular recipe ever given here, an uncooked date, cherry and rice cereal mixture, iced with chocolate.

As for the "big names", I can produce just one, Marguerite Patten, that doyenne of cookery writers.

Her Everyday Cook Book is a reference work: how much water or sugar for any fruit jam, cooking times and methods for every cut of meat, proportions for scones and pastries.

And, of course, there are relics of the long-defunct Milk and Egg Marketing Boards, kept for their strong traditional content and, in the case of 33 Dozen Eggs, for idiot-proof choux and souffls.

Oh dear, it all sounds so basic. But, in spite of enjoying reading and making unusual, exotic or elaborate dishes, time isn't on their side and it's the stuff of three meals a day, every day, I need at hand. Posher cookbooks live in bookcases elsewhere in the house.