Cookbook Open Thread
What is your favorite cookbook? Especially in regard to making regular old weekday family dinners?
I like the Leanne Ely books—Saving Dinner, Healthy Foods, and Frantic Family Cookbook—although I’ve never been able to make the Saving Dinner plan work for us on a regular basis. Picky, picky children here. And hubby doesn’t eat beef or most kinds of cheese.
As long as we’re talking recipes, what are your favorite cooking and meal-planning websites? I had a good time playing around at the interactive Robin Miller’s Quick Fix Meals toy at Food Network, but there aren’t many recipes there; you have to click over here to find the archives.
This week’s edition of Carnival of the Recipes is all about slow-cooker meals, hosted by (appropriately enough) the Slow Cooker Recipes blog. I love my crock pot. Speaking of which, I have half a roasted chicken in the fridge awaiting crock-pottish inspiration…I’m envisioning some kind of chili-chicken-corn chowder, but I don’t have a recipe. Winging it in the kitchen is not my special gift, let me tell you! Time to cozy up to my pal Google…
UPDATED: Found this and this. This one looks tasty. This one too, but Rilla can’t tolerate my having cream. (Wah.) Still, between them all I think I can come up with something.
UPDATED AGAIN to add the Loveliness of Baking fair. Yum!
Jennifer says:
There are several white bean soup recipes in the Joy of Cooking. I think adding chicken would be yummy. I love anything by Rick Rodgers, but those are better special occasion recipes. Rachael Ray had a great white turkey chili recipe last year that was “yum-o”!
On February 26, 2007 at 3:40 pm
mrscrumley says:
I like the More with Less Cookbook. I do a bunch of bulk cooking from that. The master mix for waffles and pancakes is really good.
But for weekday meals I like my Habitat for Humanity cookbook.
On February 26, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Mary says:
Joy of Cooking is my old standby. But I also collect “Taste of Home” magazine issues, because most of the recipes are very practical.
On February 26, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Susan says:
Moosewood Cooks at Home, New Recipes from Moosewood, and Moosewood Low Fat Favorites get tons of use in my kitchen. I just got a copy of Jack Bishop’s A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen and so far am enjoying that. Once a week, I use a recipe from Lorna Sass’ Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure, too. Usually I make 3 big entrees and that’s enough for most of the week, and lunches.
More With Less is a great one, too, although I’ve not been using that so often.
On February 26, 2007 at 7:39 pm
coffeemamma says:
Jamie Oliver’s Family Dinners. We are *huge* Jamie Oliver fans here, even with our various food allergies/ chemical sensitivities, etc. We make ‘most everything from scratch, but over 20 minutes worth of prep?? Not worth it for a week-day meal (so says Hubby).
On February 26, 2007 at 8:24 pm
anna says:
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison! And we are not vegetarian.
On February 27, 2007 at 5:12 am
Sheila says:
I like cooking, wish I cooked more often (my heroic husband does most of shopping and cooking), and I love cookbooks (especially Silver Palate series and Barefoot Contessa series for special events). But only one cookbook has inspired me to attempt daily dinners: The latest edition of Joy of Cooking. It has a tempting recipe for everything.
On February 27, 2007 at 6:01 am
Amy says:
Just sitting here taking notes… 🙂
On February 27, 2007 at 6:18 am
radmama says:
I have a whole bookcase of cookbooks, including a 1990’s edition of Joy of Cooking and a much lved copy of More with Less, and 9 years of Canadian Livng Magazines.
But my go to books are the same ones I learned to cook with. Edna Staebler’s Schmecks books and LLL’s Whole Foods for the Whole family. My mother’s copy of the latter fell apart, so I have a discard from an LLL group library. (The old edition has a better index.)
On February 27, 2007 at 7:04 am
Joann says:
The Joy of Cooking. Rachel Ray’s Thirty minute series. Those are the things we rely on when we need a recipe.
On February 27, 2007 at 10:28 am
Becky says:
I think you could probably substitute yogurt (especially the richer Balkan/Greek style) for the cream and still enjoy the recipe :).
My favorites are The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, How to Coook Everything by Mark Bittman (which doesn’t tell you how to cook everything, but tells about the basics for a lot), and my old Joy of Cooking, now falling apart.
But I do a lot of experimenting, and tend not to follow recipes faithfully, which is just fine as long as you’re not baking 🙂
On February 27, 2007 at 11:39 am