Brielle's Avalon

The best cookbook is the one you like best, even if it’s the box of recipe notecards your grandmother left you. Don’t have one or even notecards? Time for a trip to the library and the bookstore to see if any they have call to you. A good cookbook can be a good friend for years. If you’re lucky you can find many good friends to use in the kitchen.

The old standards are, in no particular order…well, OK, alphabetical order:

Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book As you can see we’ve loved these books to death! The large one was my Mom’s and the small paperback mass market one was the one I bought to refer to until I could afford a grown-up version. The brownie recipe I’ve been making since I was 8 comes from this book. I’m sure the special helps section has been updated in more recent editions. I enjoy using the old book from time to time and the differences between editions is fun to notice when they pop up.

Betty Crocker Cook Book I had a copy of this for years but can’t find it now! What I did find was my old copy of Betty Crocker’s New Boy’s and Girl’s Cookbook that I used as a kid and so did my kids, until their reading skills were up to the more grown-up cookbooks. When Sean was 4 he and his sister got up early and decided to make me breakfast in bed. They got the cookie-making bowl out, pushed a chair up to the counter, opened this cookbook to what was obviously a cookie recipe and put it together. The only thing they hadn’t planned for was getting the cookie trays out of the hot oven, so when they fretfully told me of their plight I pretended to sleepwalk to the kitchen, took them out of the oven, transferred them to a plate and sleepwalked back to bed. We all knew it was playacting, but it was fun and cookies in bed for breakfast was fun.

If you’re lucky enough to have an old family cookbook, keep it in a treasured spot. The Butterick Book of Recipes and Household Helps is my Great Grandmother’s from the 20s. The recipes are interesting, sometimes not terribly appetizing to modern tastes, but to see what was popular then and how they lived with the helpful hints is fun and sometimes surprisingly useful.

The I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken “Some women, it is said, like to cook. This book is not for them.” My Mom had an original paperback from way-back-when and of course I can’t find it now! All I can find is Peg Bracken’s I Try To Behave Myself book on etiquette. The originals were prohibitively expensive so I managed to get a decently priced 50-year anniversary edition with an introduction by Mrs Bracken’s daughter. I rather like it so far.

The Joy of Cooking I bought this when I worked at Waldenbooks once upon a time. Recently I saw an article about the different editions & that one edition even had information and diagrams about how to skin a squirrel. Yes, that’s the edition I have. That’s in the “Know your ingredients” chapter. I’ve never had to use that bit but other parts of it have come in handy at times. As basic as this book is, look through it some time when you’re bored. You’ll find all kinds of things you never knew you wanted to cook!

Mastering the Art of French Cooking I found a copy of this in an antique store for $10 and grabbed it! One of my sisters got my Mom’s copy. It’s not so much a basic cookbook, more like moderate to advanced, but it’s good to have in the library just because…well, there’s some good stuff in there! Go ahead, challenge yourself! You’ll be surprised at what you can do. If you’ve seen the movie or read the book Julie and Julia, this is the book that spurred them and the blog. If you get a copy it’s worth exploring and experimenting. You’ll probably surprise yourself if you try some of the recipes. So many of us grew up watching her programs it was something I just had to have.

These are just basic American (with some nod to international in some recipes) cookbooks and yes, I have copies of each of them. They include information on basic tools, supplies, ingredients and techniques, Some even have tables for equivalences and cooking times. Yes I have all of them. Pick one you like and start cooking. There are thousands more cookbooks on every imaginable specialty area of cooking. Basically, the best cookbook is the one you like the best and keep turning to. If you’re not careful your cook book bookcase could end up looking like mine.