Your favorite Cookbooks - Page 2

Food Network Fan · 12-20-2007, 11:26 AM

Nice collection. Hey!! what's that Tennessee banner doing in there? Aren't you supposed to be a WVU fan if you live here?

MiseEnPlace · 12-20-2007, 06:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Food Network Fan

Nice collection. Hey!! what's that Tennessee banner doing in there? Aren't you supposed to be a WVU fan if you live here?

Did you see the little green buffalo on the top of the bookshelf? I'm a grad of Marshall University. The Tennessee is for my other degree.
Guess they'll have to revoke my residency status.

Food Network Fan · 12-20-2007, 06:53 PM

Ahh you are a Marshall person, I guess here you have to be one or the other.

Some do both I guess.

cooper · 12-20-2007, 08:34 PM

I do have a "thing" for cookbooks, but use few of them. All of Alton Browns, all of Jeff Smiths. My current favorite is Robert Irvines, Mission: Cook. I have a Joy of Cooking, but it annoys me to no end. You look one thing up and you end up having to go to 15 different pages to make something.

Food Network Fan · 12-20-2007, 08:35 PM

I would like to have the Robert Irvine one.

BerryBaby · 12-21-2007, 08:57 AM

I have an old Joy of Cooking and I don't care for how the recipes are presented. They all run together instead of having one per page. Plus, I enjoy seeing photos of how the dish is to look afterward and they only have pencil sketches and that is for a few.

Also have a Fanny Farmer and use that mostly for reference. My favorite is still the old Betty Crocker from 1973 that I received as a wedding shower gift.

radiodugger · 12-21-2007, 09:54 PM

Thanks BerryBaby!

I run across that one (or a different edition) every once in a while in the thrift stores, you recommend it, I assume, so next time I see it, I'll grab it...just a couple bucks...

Radio Doug

bluejeanz · 01-07-2008, 11:15 AM

I'm embarrassed to say that my stash of cookbooks runs into several hundreds, maybe 5-6 times what MiseEnPlace shows in the photo. I used to be a cookbook whore until I found Food Network several years ago and started printing their recipes off the internet.

I'm probably the oldest person here (66) so I've been acquiring them for a longer period of time. My very first cookbook was at age 15; I'd saved up and bought "The Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook", circa 1956. I thought I had the oldest B.C. book in the family but my sister-in-law beat me by one year. Hers was from '55 and it was handed down from her mother. Mine is old and weather-beaten and techniques and food temps, etc., have changed a lot in the last 50 years but I still refer to it from time to time.

I have a lot of the "Pillsbury Bake-Off" cookbooks that you used to be able to pick up at the grocery store but in later years they made them too hard to obtain so I just gave up. A lot of hits and misses with those recipes, though. Makes one wonder just HOW they won prizes for them.

I also have most, if not all, of the "Mr. Food" cookbooks from years ago. Those are down-home everyday recipes that are good and fast. The best recipe I ever got from one of them was for a coconut cake (white cake mix, a can of cream of coconut, whipped cream or Cool Whip and packaged coconut).

I have the original Julia Child "The French Chef Cookbook" from '68 and used to watch her on PBS about 40 years ago and made many of her recipes...."....save the livers!", LOL. I also have a "Joy of Cooking" from '64, "The Fanny Farmer Cookbook" from '65, a '63 edition of "McCall's Cookbook", "The New York Times Cook Book" by Craig Clairborne from '61, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" from '66 by Child/Berthole/Beck and an "America Cooks" book with recipes from The General Federation of Women's Clubs, which was also an excellent go-to book for simple recipes from areas all over the states. The prices stamped in JOC was $6.50 and FFC was $6.95. I wonder how much they are today.

I have a '66 edition of "The World Authority - Larousse Gastronomique" which cost me $20 back then. It's very hard-to-follow and not very user-friendly. It's got 8500 recipes, almost 1100 pages and I only made one recipe from it; a Quatre-Quarts cake (a pound cake). The only benefit I ever received from it was building up my biceps lifting it cause it weighs a ton.

I also have several of Rachael Ray's cookbooks.....which I purchased back when she was still a pleasant, likeable personality and I've never even cracked any of them open. A total waste of money because anything she made on TV, I could just print the recipe off their site.

I was the oldest of four kids and when my parents would go out and I'd babysit, they always knew they'd come home to something home-baked. I was around age seven when I "cooked" on my own; I made jello, LOL. And my mom always let me help her in the kitchen. When I got a little older, I'd always send away for those free recipe booklets and must have one for every product on the shelves.

As far as buying cookbooks and then being disappointed in them, try borrowing them from your local library. I've borrowed just about every cookbook any of the cooks/chefs on the Food Network have published and leaf through them and scan and print the recipes I want to save, then return the book. And it costs me nothing. All libraries probably run the same way but you can obtain a card, sign up online and do searches for either authors or the name of the cookbooks. I request them online and when they're ready to be picked up, they send me an email. The borrow-time is 3 weeks, which is long enough to look through them and print off anything I want to save.

(Sorry....once again I had diarrhea of the keyboard.)

BerryBaby · 01-07-2008, 11:22 AM

Wow, you have quite a collection. I, too, use to send away for the product booklets. Just used the old Jello book this past weekend. They really do have a lot of good recipes in there. Jello really is good but I just don't think about using it that often. The cookbook is from 1973.

I got one of the first RR cookbooks, think it was her first one and have never used it either. Read a couple of the recipes, but they just do anything for me.

The only other FN book I have is from George Stella, "Low Carb and Lovin' It". Now, that book has a lot of great recipes that I have tried. Plus, they are low carb and good for you. Too bad he isn't on FN any longer, not even in reruns.
His show was probably too healthy! (LOL)

Food Network Fan · 01-07-2008, 12:14 PM

Well if we need a recipe we know who to ask now.