Thursday, January 06, 2011

Fourth Day Food - Cookbooks and Recipes

I used to be a cookbook-aholic, especially the Betty Crocker and Pillsbury cookbooks that are in the grocery checkout lines. A few years ago I decided it was time to purge my cookbooks and keep only those I often use or have true sentimental value. Today my cookbook collection lives on a bookshelf on the back side of my kitchen island.
How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman is my first go-to book when I want to know how to cook something. Another book of Mark's, How to Cook Everything: The Basics is another stand-by book.
With my recent interest in making cupcakes, my MIL gave me The Cake Doctor Returns for Christmas. The recipes look and sound yummy, but I'd rather bake from scratch than start with a cake mix and doctor it up.

I also have a small group of cookbooks with recipes and meal plans for one or two. I haven't tried many of the recipes although I'm planning on trying more of them this year.
I have the 1997 version of The Joy of Cooking and it contains my all-time favorite recipe: Butternut Squash Stuffed with Sausage and Apples comes from this book.
I used to set up my weekly menus in Excel and create my grocery list by hand from the menu. Earlier this year I discovered The Recipe Manager program. For $30 this program does more than I need and I love it. I can enter in my recipes, create a menu and a create a shopping list customized for my grocery store. I can display the recipe on my monitor and make it large enough that I can see it across the room while cooking.
What kind of cookbooks do you have? What's your favorite cookbook? What about recipe software? Use Mr. Linky and tell me about your cookbooks and recipes.

Sweet P

3 comments:

Denise in PA said...

I am a cookbook hound - I read them like novels. I know I have over 100 (and that was after a purge couple of years ago). I can't say what my favorite it, but I also seem to go to Mark Bitman's How to Cook Everything a lot. I am currently loving the Barefoot Contessa books - I have 5 of them now.

Lori said...

Favorite cookbook? The OLD Betty Crocker Cookbook that was my mother's. I often look in it for ideas. It was printed pre chocolate chips. I think the edition I have is from somewhere in the early 1950's. It has wonderful pictures. Another favorite is the church cookbook from my husband's grandmother's church. I knew so many of the people who contributed to that cookbook. A lot of ethnic recipes my husband loves. I have a couple of shelves of cookbooks. Rather like quilt books and magazines!

Lisa said...

Now I will have to go to the bookshelf and jot them down. But I see that I need to add a few that you have listed....