Favorite Cookbooks

I Hear America Cooking: The Cooks and Recipes of American Regional Cuisine by Betty Fussell (Penguin Books, 1997)

I Hear America Cooking: The Cooks and Recipes of American Regional Cuisine by Betty Fussell (Penguin Books, 1997)

This wonderfully written book, one to read in an armchair as well as to cook from, begins in the Desert Southwest and makes a gigantic counter-clockwise sweep around the United States, examining the state of cooking in every region and searching for our culinary roots.

The Dessert Bible by Christopher Kimball (Little, Brown and Company, 2000)

The Dessert Bible

by Christopher Kimball (Little, Brown and Company, 2000)

Have you ever bought a cookbook on the strength of the cover photograph? I did when I bought this book. It’s a simple photograph of a stack of four oatmeal cookies, the top two broken in half so you can see the beautiful texture of the cookies...

The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook

Susan's Review

The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook

by Diana Shaw (Clarkson Potter, New York, 1997)

Unless you eat only meat at every meal, you will enjoy this inspired, beautifully designed, comprehensive guide to vegetarian eating and cooking.

Farm Recipes and Food Secrets from the Norske Nook

Farm Recipes and Food Secrets from the Norske Nook, by Helen Myhre with Mona Vold (Crown Publishers, 1993)

The Norske Nook restaurant sits beside Interstate 94 in western Wisconsin in the small farm community of Osseo. One day in 1976, food writers Jane and Michael Stern happened by and........

Best Recipes from the Backs of Boxes, Bottles,...

Best Recipes from the Backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Jars, by Ceil Dyer (Bristol Park Books, 1992).

This edition of Ceil Dyer’s book is ten years old but even more valuable than...

Party Food: Small and Savory

Food writer Barbara Kafka has authored many top-selling cookbooks, and Party Food is one of the best and most useful...

Keeping Entertaining Simple

I have never met Martha Storey, but I have the feeling that I would like her. Any one of us who tends to get a tad stressed out over the idea of 20 or 30 people (even if they are friends) coming over for a holiday party will appreciate her approach to entertaining....

The $50 Dinner Party

It’s hard to choose a favorite from the 26 menus in the book, but I finally settled on Menu Thirteen:

The Diabetes Food and Nutrition Bible

Susan's Review:

Diabetes is at epidemic levels in our society, and chances are you know or are one of the roughly 16 million Americans with the disease.

The Goodness of Olive Oil

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The Goodness of Olive Oil

Susan's Review:

The Goodness of Olive Oil came out in the early 1990s, when small, single-subject food books became fashionable. Others in the "Goodness" series

Memories of a Lost Egypt

The Nantucket Table

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Nantucket Table

Unfortunately, we can’t all spend the month of August vacationing on Nantucket, eating lobsters and bluefish and the island’s famous bay scallops.

Cocina de la Familia/the Family Kitchen...

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Cocina de la
Familia/the Family Kitchen.

Susan's Review:

New Hampshire is, alas, about as far away from Mexico as you can get and still be in the United States. But thanks to this book, winner of a Julia Child Cookbook of the Year award,

A Gracious Plenty:
Recipes and Recollections from the American South

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A Gracious Plenty :
Recipes and...

Susan's Review:

The rich culinary heritage of the South, from potlikker and black-eyed peas to she-crab soup and Brunswick stew, is documented in this charming book,

Michael Roberts' Parisian Home Cooking

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Michael Roberts' Parisian
Home Cooking

It's April in Paris with Michael Roberts' Parisian Home Cooking

The L.L. Bean Book of "New" New England Cookery

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Book of New New England...

Prairie Cooks : Glorified Rice,...

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Prairie Cooks :
Glorified Rice,...

Susan's Review:

You’ll want to sit in a comfortable chair and read this book from cover to cover, perhaps rising from time to time to make coffee

Classic Home Desserts

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Classic Home Desserts :
A Treasury of...

"These are the desserts made at home by mothers and grandmothers rather than by professional pastry chefs," wrote author and master chef Richard Sax.

Christmas Memories Cookbook

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Christmas Memories Cookbook

Mystic Seaport is a maritime museum on Long Island Sound in Mystic, Connecticut, and a favorite destination for our family. At Christmas time,...

Cold-Weather Cooking

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Cold-Weather
Cooking

On a cold Saturday night about a year ago, friends of our invited us ...

Horn of the Moon Cookbook

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Horn of the Moon Cookbook

On a raw and sleety day sometime in the late 1970s.......

Mennonite Community Cookbook

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the Mennonite Community Cookbook

We stumbled across an old copy of the "Mennonite Community Cookbook" ...