I think it's a genetic trait. My aunt once confided in me that my mother, at the time she met my dad, "stashed" all her recipe collections (from around the house!) under her bed so he wouldn't think she was, shall we say, "obsessesed" with cooking!

She now has a library of probably more than 100 cookbooks, and oodles ando oodles of clipped recipes that go back to the '50's when she was a food editor for a local newspaper. The hilarious thing is that she's a wonderful woman, but an awful cook! We used to dread Wednesday nights when she'd have to "try out" the newest and latest recipes to be printed in the next day's newspaper.

And then, she gave me some of her older cookbooks -- she had checked off those which were printed in the paper. Horribly awful results on our table were glowing words of praise in print. It's really very funny.

(The scariest thing, tho, was in one of her weekly columns people would ask her for specific cooking advice. I guess no one died from it!) :-)