Too Many Useless Cookbooks - do you use a cookbook?

One thing I've been using more and more is the Food Channel's recipe section:

http://www.foodtv.com/

(At the top, search within recipes...)

Sozlet is a huge fan of the Food Channel (she adores "Iron Chef" and especially Mario Battali -- he was recently on and she made a little sign with "Mario" on it and waved it while chanting "Go Mario! Go Mario!") and keeps asking me to make stuff she sees there. So I found the above while searching for a specific recipe, but it's also great if you have a certain ingredient and you're not sure what to do with it.

One thing I really like about it is that you can sort the recipes in various ways, like by difficulty, by ratings, etc.

Sometimes...I also get recipes from the Food Channel website and Martha Stewarts' as well.

Here's the last two -

New York Times Internation Cookbook, Craig Claiborne
one of my long time favorite cookbooks, though I have an old and now rather crumpled edition
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006010788X/qid=1144366046/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/002-0280951-4796858?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

and this was a book from a local restaurant when I lived in LA -
it was owned by a group of people, I think the sculptor Robert Graham, producer Tony Bill, and the actor Dudley Moore, chef was Leonard Schwarz, I think. There was a grand piano in the room, large comfortable booths, delicious food, about a blook from the beach - actually right behind where I once had a studio, but not at the same time. This is the place with the great (to me) meatloaf and gravy recipe.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1580080677/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-0280951-4796858#reader-link

Yeh, even Cookbook Mama here uses Cooks.com and Epicurious and whatever else comes up when I plug a food into google. I think cookbooks will nearly go out of style completely and then have a renaissance some time later.

Some of my old cookbooks are now valuable. I bought some damn book with recipes about from a particular Sicilian inn; probably paid 24.00 for it back when I was especially gaga about italian cookbooks.. now worth about $300., because, I guess, it was both a nicely produced book and there aren't that many of them. Luckily I never cooked out of it, so it's in pretty good condition. On the other hand, I'm not selling it, so I might as well dig it out and get cooking.

Ah, I'm wrong about the main chef at 72 Market, it was Roland Gilbert.

I've bought more than my share of cookbooks over the years, but most of them are packed away in boxes in the basement.

Years ago, I started picking up cookbooks on vacations, mostly to the south. A condo we rented in the New Orleans area had a copy of Jambalaya, published by the Junior League of New Orleans, in a drawer in the kitchen, and some of the recipes looked really interesting. I liked the idea of being able to recreate some of the regional dishes, so I bought a copy for myself.

On another trip down south I picked up a series of three books called River Road Recipes published by the Junior League of Baton Rouge, and another one called The Southern Junior League Cookbook which is a copilation of recipes from Junior League cookbooks across the south. I'm on my second copy of the latter. The first one I set down too close to a hot stove element and it caught on fire.

Those are all pre-internet, which is a great cooking resource, but I think I'd still buy them today.

There's also Stop and Smell the Rosemary: Recipes and Traditions to Remember, by the Junior League of Houston, which I picked up last year. That's a wonderful book.

I bought a countertop rotisserie a couple of years ago and picked up a book that has lots of good ideas. It's one of the few cookbooks I could find dealing with rotisserie cooking. It's called The Ultimate Rotisserie Cookbook. It's one of the few I could find on the subject.

When we bought a smoker a few years ago, someone from Abuzz recommended the Jamisons' Smoke & Spice.

Ah, I see I'm repeating myself. Well, I'll say it again, "It's one of the few ..."

I just got another Paula Deen cookbook that's just desserts. I'm going to make the It's Better Than Sex cake for my husbands birthday tomorrow. I hope he likes it...but not too much. :wink:

mckinzie! I was just coming back here to put in my "Galveston Gormet" cookbook that was produced as a fundraiser for UTMB.

I also have a couple of "Heart Throbs" Cookbooks produced by some heart association in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

And a Lebonese cookbook from some other local fundraiser.

I use the books a LOT! Talk about comfort foods!

Anything that calls for a bit of this, a bit of that mixed with a can of soup is okay in my book.

I may sound like a food snot, even to me, but it ain't entirely so. I first paid attention at all somewhere in the early fifties, and that was the Dawn of Frozen Foods and heyday of Cream of Mushroom soup sauce. My only quibble then about our meals was that when my dad was long unemployed, dinner would be some portion of canned fish, some frozen carrots, and a glass of milk, my main gripe being the milk, which I learned later, much later, I didn't like since it was so fatty. I was one of those children who sat at the table until she finished her milk. I liked Campbell's soups in general, except I had to pick every one of the little bitty mushrooms out of the mushroom soup and cast them aside to the edge of the plate.

Now - I think cooking fresh can be (almost - can't beat microwave) as easy as using canned soups, which I mostly think of as yucky except for a few. But then I sometimes use canned beans and canned crushed tomatoes with regularly cooked garlic, onions, et al.

Well, back to Junior League and Garden Club cookbooks. The ones I've bought or seen are about a half century back in cooking smarts. That is, they are byproducts of the forties and fifties. I have a few forties cookbooks - those are interesting as they assume you don't have a lot on hand... and they are pre frozenfooddevelopment era.

I was born in the early 50s, Osso, and Mr. M. and I had a conversation just the other day about the dawn of frozen foods. Ironic, that. Other than apples, oranges and bananas, all of our fruit came out of a can, and most vegetables, unless it was summertime and one had a garden, were canned, too. I remember being a terribly picky eater as a child.

Since I've "grown up", I don't think I've ever bought a can of vegetables, though I may buy the odd tin of fruit for use in a dessert. We don't buy frozen veggies anymore either, as almost everying is available all year round, even fresh asparagus.

That's why I like them, Boomerang, comfort foods, and the southern cooking was different than what I was used to.

Our kids' schools have produced cookbooks as fundraisers, as have churches and other local public service organizations. I think it's a great way to raise money, and some of the stuff is actually good.

Well.

I presume old time souther cooking didn't have to do with cans.

Whatever. the key thing is, that some ingredients blended well.

That is what I look at recipes for, from Junior League or ExcrusiatingPretensionville - the blending of flavors.

I hava a particular intersest since I love food and have a very low level sense of smell. But my sense of smell is probably not all gone and I get wafts. I also enjoy the talk.

Hey, Osso, I'd be happy to send you Cooking with Soup, a Campbell Cookbook, 11th printing in 1972, or, even better, Campbell's Great Restaurants Cookbook, U.S.A., don't know when that was published, but it's rather dog-eared. They found their way into my basement when a friend moved to Vancouver 10 - 15 years ago. Yes, I am a pack rat!

Good grief, I lost my spelling facility, long about the last post.

busy spooning soup, yes, from a can, a lobster bisque from Bookbinders, I think it was.

I am not against liking Campbell's soups, as I have and 'g'help me, may again, but this sludge is as nothing compared to the world's possible soups. Slim pickings.

Even the newly adventuring companies (Amy's, I think amy's is tameville or worse, I've liked nothing from Amy's) don't get near real soup. US Grocery stores offer the equal of pabulum on many levels, to our detriment, even regard our own heritage. All (or mostly all) is smudge.

Osso, if you were offended by by my post(s), that wasn't my intention. I was just remembering with you, I thought, when things came out of a can.

On the contrary, McKenzie, I'm only agreeing with your posts.



I get obstreporous, and will usually settle down. But... I think the availability of possible foods, given the existing infrastructure and the technology, is incredibly lame.

And, McKenzie, I think you should keep those. But if you'd like to move them on to someone who'd appreciate them, I'll be glad to accept.

Pack Rat O