Favorite Cookbooks

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What are your favorite cookbooks? I would be hard pressed to come up with just one (I LOVE cookbooks) but I suppose It would be Joy of Cooking-just because it has soooo much information. I also love my Betty Crocker- I'm fortunate to have one of the older (early 70's) editions. My husband found it in a thrift store. For good, plain everyday, and yes Melissa, THRIFTY cooking, I love my More-with Less cookbook. Another favorite is the Laural's Kitchen Books-they also have a great deal of information-particularly the nutrition tables. I have many that I love, but these are the ones that are being held together with packing tape.

I collect Scandanivian,especially Swedish Cookbooks. I am also fond of small, regional cookbooks, the type that clubs put together themselves for fundraisers. If we visit a different part of the country, I try to find one of these types of cookbooks for my souvineer.

-- Kelly in Ky (Ksaderholm@yahoo.com), December 08, 2001

Answers

My OLD Joy of Cooking, not the new one. They ruined the new one, leaving out basic recipes and modernizing it. Too many tried and true American classics missing.

Then, my Chef Paul Prudhome collection. Cajun cooking.

Then, my own collection of family recipes that I put together formally for kids' Christmas presents a few years ago, but people keep asking for copies after eating our Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts.

-- Rose (open_rose@hotmail.com), December 08, 2001.


I have found that the cook-books I go back to over and over are the ones I buy that are published locally. You know the ones the church group, or 4-H clubs or ball teams put together to make money. Probably because the foods are familiar and I seem to have most of the ingredients available. There are many regional differences in available foods, and it seems like local cook-books make the most of our local ingredients.

-- Melissa (me@home.net), December 08, 2001.

Having between 75 and 100 cookbooks-as well as other type of books with recipes in them, it's hard to pick a favorite.(That's certainly no record, someone on CS has over 300 cookbooks) I'd say whichever one I got the last delicious recipe from.

-- Cindy (SE. IN) (atilrthehony@hotmail.com), December 09, 2001.

Thanks Cindy; You can put me in the same category as you..Since we have over 60 Cook Books, we use them all.....Radar

-- Robert (snuffy@1st.net), December 09, 2001.

I have over 100 cookbooks. I can't resist cookbooks. I love the old fashioned cookbooks and chuckwagon cookbooks but my favorites are the Pampered Chef cookbooks. I do usually make what they buy packaged but have never had a complaint with anything out of these.God Bless

-- Micheale from SE Kansas (mbfrye@totelcsi.net), December 09, 2001.


Kelly: Don't feel bad about your Betty Crocker cook book we have the 1956 edition, we received it as a wedding gift...The old ones are the good ones...My wife just went through it looking for a recipe for Deviled eggs.....Radar

-- Robert (snuffy@1st.net), December 09, 2001.

Hello Kelly,

The New York Times Cookbook and The American Cookbook are my favorites!

Sincerely,

Ernest

-- http://communities.msn.com/livingoffthelandintheozarks (espresso42@hotmail.com), December 09, 2001.


Better HOmes and Garden Cookbook has gone the way of Betty Crocker etc. there's still some good recipes but not like in the older one. I was able to find one from way back at a thrift store for $2. Smells a little musty but I'm glad to have it

-- Cindy (SE. IN) (atilrthehony@hotmail.com), December 10, 2001.

The old, old Betty Crocker is my all around favorite, but I, too, enjoy the locally published ones. Polly

-- (jserg45@hotmail.com), December 10, 2001.

I have a soft spot for old cookbooks too, but can't say that I have as many as some of you folks, Lord! Where would I put them!

I've gotta say that the one that I use the most is the James Beard cook book as he has just about everything basic in it.

But the ones I love the most are my collection of Jane Watson Hopping, The Pioneer Lady, she has cook books with such lovely titles as, The Country Mothers Cookbook, A celebration of Motherhood and Old fashioned Cooking, The Lazy Days of Summer Cookbook, Hearty winter cookbook, The many Blessings cookbook, And the pioneer ladys country Christmas cook book. Each one is a piece of art, with poems , stories, letters from her past. The kind of cookbooks that you curl up with on a winters day to read, then when you get a cramp in your leg you get up and create one of the dishes in the books pages with images in your head of the grandmother or aunt who fixed it for Mrs. Hopping when she was a girl. Sometimes reading her books make me cry, at how lovely the togetherness of yesterday was.

Then another favorite of mine, since I am a hillbilly at heart, is The Folklore and Art of Southern Appalachian Cooking, Smokehouse Ham, Spoonbread, and Scuppernong Wine, by Joseph E. Dabney,. Some of my familys very best favoirtie meals have come from this book, my very favorite being Gatlinburg Squash Cassorole, and blackberry upside down cobbler. This cookbook is another reader, full of people and stories.

-- tren (trendlespin@msn.com), December 10, 2001.



Tren- another favorite of mine is the Foxfire Cookbook-its got a lot of great reading and the recipies are the ones I grew up with.

My Joy of Cooking is an older one too, I havn't seen the new one.

-- Kelly (Ksaderholm@yahoo.com), December 11, 2001.


Kelly, Thanks ! The foxfire Cookbook, Man I have to get that one! So, it has recipes that you grew up with, does that mean that you grew up in the Appalachians?

-- tren (trendlespin@msn.com), December 11, 2001.

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