Rachel Allen is a fantastic home cook - makes some classic british dishes really easy. I've worked through most of her recipes in 'Rachel's Favourite Food for Living'. Nostalgic and delicious.

Tera wrote: "I just picked this up at a thrift store The Way to Cook. I'm getting ready for Julie and Julia"

Tera, I loved The Way to Cook. It taught me all kinds of interesting things... .

Mandy I do the SAME thing...read them and then never take them out again!! LOL

I like the church lady and women's club cookbooks, too!
My daughter went to Trinidad last year on a mission trip and brought back a cookbook for me. Although I haven't made too many of the recipes, the ones I have made are delicious and am anxious to try many more! They sound so wonderful! My cousin's wife is from Trinidad and she makes some fabulous food!

Cindy ~ Aren't they the best? I love going to flea markets and yard sales and rummaging through the books for them. They are always the greatest finds.

Oh Mandy, I love those 'church' or like the 'women's club' member cookbooks too! One of mine is getting pretty old and worn but still my favorite!

I personally love the cookbooks that are passed out at churches from all the members. They are always the best! I'm also a sucker for allrecipes.com

As for actual cookbooks, I have a lot and I normally just read them and never pull them out again. Funny though because I LOVE to cook.

I love cookbooks. My absolute favorite is the Joy of Cooking passed to me by my mom.

Others I enjoy:
Betty Crocker
Weight Watchers Complete Cookbook
Volumetric Eating Cookbook
Fix it and Forget it Lightly (crock pot)
Rachael Ray 30 Minute Get Real Meals
Rachael Ray Just in Time

I too love cook books. For Mother's Day my husband bought three big boxes full from someone he found online (like freecycle). I am still filtering through them but I have discovered quite a few from the 40's and 50's that are great! I still fall back to The Joy of Cooking for most recipes though.

I love cook books. My favorites (after the copy of Betty Crockers cookbook that I inherited) is a series of cookbooks from the Jr League of Denver, probably from the 90's. Colorado Cache, Colorado Colore, and Colorado Collage. They have beautiful pictures and all the recipes always come out edible in spite of my cooking ability!

I have my mom's Betty Crocker cookbook from when she got married that I still turn to but they've got some stuff in there that really makes me scratch my head. My first cookbook was a Winnie-the-Pooh honey cookbook that I still have. My favs are the church/PTO cookbooks when I'm just looking for something new to try.

Sonja I'm definitely checking that out. I love making sandwiches - over the top are my speciality. I too am getting ready for Julie & Julia - we should come up with a theme. Cooking something "together" for a week? That we all agree on? That would be FUN. (And there comes the geeky cook in me).

I recently bought 'wichcraft which is a cookbook for sandwiches! I thought it was too cool to pass up but usually I opt for soups or The Joy of Cooking.

A lot of the time I wing it while cooking. Sometimes it turns out well and sometimes it really doesn't... I also really love the Everyday Food magazine for simple, very tasty ideas.

Nancy!!!!! I hae a fewe gluten-free cookbooks that I would love to send to you. LAt witner we thoguht that my 13 year old daughter had deliacs, so I went full throttle into cooking for her. One has some great baking mixes that you can pre-make and keep in the fridge. Message me with your addy and I will pop thme nt he mail for you!

I just picked this up at a thrift store The Way to Cook. I'm getting ready for Julie and Julia

I think I have been a good, creative cook for years. Sometimes recipes, sometime I wing it. But found out recently I have Celiacs - anyone got some good gluten free cook books to recommend? What I have seen takes lots of prep work. I would be happier with fresh and quick. I'm not that interested in the baking since it is much more time consuming. Time is not something I have the luxury of - or I rather be READING!! or quilting...

I have been cooking for 40+ years and don't often use a cook book. There are occasions when I seek ideas and usually turn to Joy of Cooking. It is packed with great recipes, simple or complex and describes different foods quite well. I am now on my second copy!

I have two favorites that I use over and over. Both have easy to follow instructions with easy to buy ingredients and the recipes all turn out tasty.
They are:

The Good Friends Cookbook and Chinese Cooking by Stephen Yan.

I used the Better HOmes and Gardens one for all things .. . until I found
Rodale's Basic Natural Foods...it is a much healthier version that highlights fresh options.

My Grandmother's Fannie FArmer is on my kitchen counter in a basket, along with the Silver Palate...but more for memories than use!

My favorite new cookbook was also voted a favorite on the NY Times list this year. It's called The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper and it has "recipes, stories and opinions." It's a fun book to read all the way around and I highly recommend it.

My mom always used Joy of Cooking, and there are a few Classics in there that I cannot live without, like Gaston Beef Stew.

Also, I love Good Housekeeping because they are foolproof. They test and test those recipes -- which I appreciate because I'm not the world's best cook.

My favorite "old school" cookbooks - the ones I never throw away - are the Silver Palate cookbooks because they gave you great serving ideas along with the recipes. It was exciting and made me want entertain.

Better Homes and Gardens is the staple for me. I also love The Busy Mom's Make It Quick Cookbook. I'm not a mom, but I am busy (and when I'm not busy, I'm lazy). I like it because it's got shortcuts (using frozen or canned chopped veggies instead of cutting them yourself etc) and everything I've made is tasty.

I've also been a Bon Appetit subscriber for a decade and I have a good time trying out their recipes. Some are good, some not, but it's a fun adventure. Their partner website, epicurious.com, has reviews for all their recipes that are very helpful. I have a profile there where you can save your ratings with a collection of recipes.

My Better Crocker Cookbook has been well used also. I got it almost 22 years ago, for a bridal shower. You can really tell that's it's been used a lot: some of the pages are ripped and covered in stains and the cover is even burned on the bottom right hand corner! I have lots of cookbooks and I love to look at them but when I need to find new recipes I usually go to allrecipes.com.

I have the Cake Mix Doctor. I love that cookbook. Honestly my favorite cookbooks are one's put together by ladies auxillaries from churches, especially small towns. I think the cookbook I use most often is the one put together by the ladies auxillary of the voluteer fire dept. in the town where my husband grew up. It's got real recipes that real people have passed on through generations. There are stains all over this book because I use it so often! I was also fortunate enough to add a couple of my own favorite recipes to it.

Other than that, the good old Betty Crocker cookbook has saved by butt numerous times! :-)

Shelby I think I have that cook book but haven't looked at it yet. (It was my Mom's)

Oh I don't know how I missed this thread. I am cook book aholic. I love the things.
My faves are southern based ones. Let's see Paula Deen earlier ones I cook from alot. And yep I admit the Cake Mix Doctor one gets used alot!The Cake Mix Doctor Oh I didn't realize she had some new ones til I pulled up the link! hmmm
I like church cookbooks and the Gooseberry ones.
Art Smith's is also one of my favorites. Okay I'm rambling...gonna go look up some :)

Yes Holli, it's "Read it and Eat: A Month-by-Month Guide to Scintillating Book Club Selections and Mouthwatering Menus" and it looked really cool!

Yeah that's a good one!!! :)

Holli, the one you sent me for our CoL bday (and one you bought for you too!) is great! I've already tried about a dozen recipes. Love it!

Robin to the Rescue Quick & Simple Recipes for Delicious Home Cooking

That would be fun Ericka! Do you remember what it was called? Thanks for sharing your suggestions everyone.....I love looking through new cookbooks and I get addicted to them..I must say I probably use the internet more than books but I love cookbooks with pictures.

I am addicted to cookbooks. I saw a really neat one once, it had books to suggest for a book club, and then recipes to go along with each book it suggested, to correlate with the time period, region, etc.

I have the Better Homes and Gardens one, which has vastly different recipes from my mom's 1980s version (the one I'm used to cooking with!). And I've picked up a couple of White House cookbooks, but have never cooked anything from them. One of the antique malls in town has a booth that is about half full of church/ladies' groups/PTA cookbooks. I'm dying to have the time to really go through them all and find ones that I think I'd like.

I also love to cook (which reminds me I better start doing it again...I've been lazy for the past month) and I'm very opinionated about cookbooks (go figure, me, opinionated?).

I love Cook With Jamie. This is a book I turn to frequently, for family dinners and for entertaining. I've not made everything in the book, but I've made a bunch and have loved every one.

I also like Food Made Fast Soup and Food Made Fast Salad. These are little books in the Williams-Sonoma collection. I've never gone wrong with these and I have made almost all of the dishes. I will comment that in the soup book I always add more broth than what it calls for because I like brothy soups.

For baking, the best bread cookbook is The Bread Baker's Apprentice Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread and the best cookie cookbook is Martha Stewart's Cookies.

I like Baking Illustrated A Best Recipe Classic also, but, there are things I disagree with among the "test kitchen" experts, so I modify a lot when I use this book. But, they have the best blueberry cobbler in the world!

I collect cookbooks. I dont cook much but I sure could make just about anything

rae

I guess I'm old fashioned, but the cookbook that I use the most is my trusty, old, Betty Crocker's Cookbook. Betty never fails me when I need to find out how to make something basic. And lots of times basic is all I need. For baking, I love my Mom's Big Book of Baking 200 Simple, Foolproof Recipes for Delicious Family Treats to Get You Through Every Birthday Party, Class Picnic, Potluck, Bake Sale, Holiday, and No-School Day. Learned how to make a great pie crust with real butter from this book, plus lots of yummy cookies. and for anything unique, I would have to say I use the internet to find specific recipes. I have a bunch of other cookbooks in my cupboard, but the two above and the internet are what I use the most.

I don't have any cookbooks besides the ones that were my moms. I would like to pick some up whenever I can for cheap at book sales or Borders. This isn't a cookbook per se..but I do go on epicurious.com alot.

Another great thread to bring back up to the top.......

What are your fave cookbooks? I love my Sandra Lee ones I have and I'm wanting The Pioneer Woman's Cookbook when it comes out.

Nigella Lawson's "How to Eat" is a fun read, and the recipes are delicious.

Lately I've done quite a bit of cooking from The Barefoot Contessa's cookbooks. You can find them pretty cheap at Costco.

I also like Mollie Katzen's "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest."

My two most well-thumbed cookbooks are:

Vegetariana by Nava Atlas

Cooking from Quilt Country: Hearty Recipes from Amish and Mennonite Kitchens by Marcia Adams

Kinda different, huh? Comfort food recipes that remind me of my childhood in western Pennsylvania coal mining region and the healthy food I feel compelled to eat to make up for all the pork and butter in the Amish recipes. Those German ladies who still cook huge chicken and noodle fund raiser dinners at the country Catholic churches near my hometown... oh, my word can they cook up a storm....and the tradition continues holiday summer weekends. And the pies... Just the memory of that pie crust makes me too embarassed to even try.

I have read this...and although I love Amy Sedaris and found the book highly entertaining, I didn't find much that would be useful to me on a daily basis. The recipes were pretty decent, but I already knew how to cook most of it, with the exception of her Greek food. It is hilarious though and totally worth reading. There's actually a chapter called "Entertaining the Elderly", and the pictures and graphics and almost worth the read in themselves.

I just found a new cookbook at the library that I'm very excited to try. It's called The Flexitarian Table by Peter Berley and has one meat version and one vegetarian version of each dish he creates. I'm looking forward to trying it.

One of my favorites is The Black Dog Summer on the Vineyard cookbook. It has a lot of laid-back easy dishes that aren't too pretentious or complicated.

If you really want to cook all the way through a cookbook. A really good one is Rachel Ray's 365 No Repeats. I have cooked through half of it and they are all easy recipes and you can habe something new for dinner every night.

i've never cooked through a cook book before! (for some reason, i never thought to!)

my 1st cook book & a GREAT reference cook book is "Good Housekeeping's Illustrated Cookbook". it's got everything you need to know about everything like cooking times for different kinds of meats, dry & wet measurements/substitutions, spices... awesome! plenty of good recipes too!

beyond that, out of all the ones i have (i've some how ended up with a collection of them!), the following are my favorites:

"The Organic Cook's Bible"
"Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2007" (last year was such a good year for recipes from cooking light mag!)
"The Welcome Table" by maya angelou
"Paula Dean Celebrates"
"You're Cookin' It Country" by loretta lynn (more for the stories than the recipes though!)

Has anyone read this http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4135.... I know its not a true cook book but it has always caught my eye

Here are my faves, the books that I can't live without:

The Joy of Cooking
The Moosewood Cookbook Mollie Katzen
How To Be A Domestic Goddess Nigella Lawson
Cook With Jamie Jamie Oliver
Meals Made Easy Real Simple
and
Creme de Colorado

I'm always open to new finds, but these little books are used often.

Hi new to the group.

This may sound lame, but...
the Weight Watchers My Program cookbook is great!! Trying to loose weight or not, the recipes are easy and flavorful. They are also easy to tweak. The book is about 15 bucks and only available at a WW center/store. It is worth going to pick up.

I love cooking as much as reading. My sister gives me a hard time for needing a bookshelf in the kitchen. For Christmas I got 2 new cookbooks. One is the new Better Homes & Garden. It is great they have allthe classics updated to be healthier. The 2nd was from America's Test Kitchen called America's Best Lost Recipes. I love going through and finding new recipes or new twists on old favorites.

I haven't cooked through a whole cookbook but I love Surreal Gourmet: Real Food for Pretend Chefs. A new one I'm trying some recipes from is A Beautiful Bowl of Soup: The Best Vegetarian Recipes.

If you like cooking through a cook-book, you might want to read Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. The author cooks through Julia Child's tome. It's going to be a movie with Meryl Streep eventually.

Sandy

So, other than reading I love to cook. Not that Im a great cook but I still enjoy it. I especially love trying new recipes and always check out the cooking section of my library. Currently I am cooking from the Texas Home Cooking Cookbook and I love it. I have made a few things from it that are Yum-a-licious!
Question?
What cookbooks do you love? Have you ever cooked through a cookbook? I think that may be one of my goals if I can find the right book. Any suggestions?