Your Favorite Cookbooks

This is officially a cookbook tomorrow, Make it fast, cook it slow. It is a crockpot cookbook that a mother that makes all gluten free foods has created. She has a blog that I have been following www.ayearofslowcooking.com and I love it.

i didn't see Moosewood Restaurant cookbooks on any of your responses and they have some great recipes. They are pro healthy/natural organic & vegetarian- Here is a link: http://www.moosewoodrestaurant.com/aboutus.html

They also put recipes up on their website (free, yay!) :). the link to those is below: http://www.moosewoodrestaurant.com/recipes_archive.html

I love to cook and have a huge collection of cookbooks, but the ones I recommend (and give to others) are the ones I use again and again and love without fail.

First, the cheapest: I love the blog at 101cookbooks.com. The author is an amazing cook. The focus is on whole and vegetarian foods. Just last week I made three of her recipes: Broccoli Crunch Salad (my family begs for it), Otsu (soba noodles with ginger, sesame and lemon)and the amazing Squash filled with Corn and Scallion Custard.

For cookbook cookbooks, I too love the Cooks Illustrated ones and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison is my go-to gift. Every single person that I've given it to absolutely raves about it. Try Everyday Greens by Annie Sommerville too. Honestly, I think you could buy every Deborah Madison and Annie Sommerville cookbook and have an outstanding collection with those alone. If you want vegan options, the Veganomicon is great.

Unlike lots of other folks, I'm not a fan of the Moosewood cookbooks. I find them very uneven. Some things turn out great, some are flops. If I invest the effort, I want spectacular every time. I love food, every type of food (ask me how many recipes I have that use kale, chard or brussels sprouts...), so my issue with Moosewood isn't the type or variety of foods that they include. I just don't find them consistently delicious.

Lastly, I have to put a plug in for my favorite cookbook for weekend cooking (meaning it takes some time to make the dishes, but they are worth it). I love Julie Sahni's book Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking. The dishes are a little subtly seasoned for my taste, so I tend to double all of the spices, but the recipes are amazing. I especially love a quick dish from that book that is a yellow split pea soup with butternut squash and an aromatic oil drizzle with ginger, cumin seeds and basil. Easier than it sounds, and absolutely delicious.

Good luck and I hope you find some cookbooks that you love!

The Swarzbein Principle by Diana Swarzbein & Nourishing Traditons by Sally Fallon. Swarzbein gives a lot of great info on how our body processes stuff, along with Fallon's book, which is essentially a cookbook of more old, traditional-style cooking. Good stuff.

It sounds like you already know how to choose healthy foods, and you're looking to diversify your menu. Mediterranean and Asian foods tend to be healthy choices. Look for ethnic cookbooks with recipes that sound appealing. Then, if necessary, modify them by using less cheese or fat, adding whole grains, etc. My adult children love feta cheese, Greek salads, strongly flavored olives, couscous, sushi, Thai curries, and polenta, just to name a few things, because they grew up eating them. Most of my ethnic cookbooks were gifts, or were purchased from the markdown table at bookstores.

I'm gonna recommend a non-organic-focussed one (I am also an all-scratch, all-organic cook): The New Best Recipe, from the Editors of Cook's Illustrated.

The reason is, it tells you WHY everything works the way it does--why to mix that before this, or what specifically they were aiming for when they chose 2T instead of 3 T of something ... I actually almost never follow a recipe exactly as they've written it (except the first time, sometimes), but they've written them So Thoroughly that I can extrapolate how to change it to how *I* want the food to turn out ;).

You'll have to decide what to do when they declare (very accurately) something like that to get a flaky and rich pie crust requires butter and shortening (myself, I use all butter anyhow ... but I knew going in that my crust would therefore be a bit floppy ;) ).

For vegetables, when I am being a Good Nutritious Low Impact cook (not as often as I ought), I use two mid-20th-century "Vegetables" cookbooks. I didn't grow up with vegetables cooked from raw (Mom used mostly frozen) ... but the housewives of the 1950s apparently did!!! I picked them up at a used book sale. Goodwills, used bookstores, and a couple of relatives' estates also contributed to a collection of cookbooks too large to admit ... but that big one I recommended first, is my go-to reference, for everything. Since I bought it, I have actually gotten rid of quite a number of my smaller books ...

I think you will love Feeding the Whole Family! Can't remember the author but
should be pretty easy to find!

My favourites include:

Simply in Season by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert

Moosewood Cookbooks

Enjoy!!!!

Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron
Feed Me I'm Yours by Vicki Lansky
Vegetarian Planet by Didi Emmons
Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant

And the one that never lets me down:

The red & white checkered Better Homes & Gardens classic cookbook

"Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison. This book offers a variety of recipes that can be included in any omnivore menu (so, not exclusively for veg.) and many are vegan-friendly with suggested adjustments. I've found that most of the recipes I've tried have worked with good results and I was exposed to such a variety of greens and other ingredients that I'd never tried before. Very fun and informative...and the focus on aromatics and flavor is something I quite appreciate!

I love:

How it all Vegan and The Garden of Vegan! We're not actually vegan in our household, but the recipes are really good, and easy.

I also do love The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, by Molly Katzen.

Anything by Sarah Kramer...they are vegan cookbooks but they are super yummy!

For vegetarian/vegan type recipes (from our veg days), I think John Robbin's May All Be Fed has some good recipes. For Middle Eastern and Asian foods, I like Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East-Vegetarian Cooking. For more general recipes, I like the NY Times cookbook. And for inspiration and learning, I have a subscription to Cook's Illustrated which I love!

Bon appetit...

Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. This is my nutrition "bible" that I use to guide all my cooking, even when using other cookbooks. It focuses on traditional cooking, using whole unprocessed foods, to get the most nutrition out of all your foods.