One Hundred Dollars a Month

If I had endless cupboard space in my kitchen, I would fill it up with cookbooks. I love them. My family doesn’t realize this, but their meals would be pretty bland without my favorite cookbooks and the HH surely would have starved to death if I didn’t refer to them my first few years of marriage. Of course he would say, looking at collection I already have, that I don’t need to add to it.

But I totally disagree. If you’re actively using them, there’s no such thing as too many cookbooks! I love how every chef has a different take on food and how to use ingredients. It certainly keeps our meals and snacks pretty well rounded around here. Take a look at my very favorite {and very used} cookbooks: The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook: Everything you ever wanted to know about jam and more. There are 100+ original jam, jelly, and marmalade recipes, plus, master jam artisan Rachel Saunders shares all of her technical preserving knowledge, as well as her unique jam maker’s perspective on fruit. Plenty: If I’m ever at a loss on how to make boring vegetables not so boring every night, I turn to London chef Yotam Ottolenghi. His book includes 120 vegetarian recipes that my family has gobbled up every single time I’ve made them! The Martha Stewart Cookbook: This one’s a no-brainer. Of course it would be on my list. She’s my food hero and her recipes are awesome. This cookbook is so marked up I probably need a fresh new copy at this point! Simply in Season: I was first alerted to this cookbook by my dear friend Jane.  Simply in Season is packed full of seasonal recipes that use fresh, local ingredients.  The book is divided up into chapters by season, so you’ll always have recipes for what you have currently growing in your backyard garden. I use my Simply in Season cookbook all the time and if you take a look at the reviews on Amazon, you’ll see the reviews on it are awesome as well! The New Best Recipe: The authors of this cookbook didn’t mess around. They made each recipe over and over and over {sometimes up to 40+ times} to perfect each one before including it. So this book is full of 1000 tried and true recipes, and the beautiful pictures with most recipes are a total bonus! Thy Hand Hath Provided Cookbook: My friend Jane wrote this cookbook last fall and it’s simply AWESOME! She even has it on Amazon as an eBook. In case you don’t already know, a few months before I started my own blog in January of 2009, I discovered a few blogs and fell in love with them. Jane’s blog, Thy Hand Hath Provided, was one of them. The All-American Cookie Book: Since there is no such thing as too many cookies, of course a recipe book devoted just to the tasty Southern Living Cookbook: I love the magazine and all their recipes, and I absolutely love their cookbook. Their recipes aren’t complicated like you might expect from a magazine cookbook. And don’t let the “southern” throw you off. So many of these recipes are totally healthy too! Tender: This cookbook is so much more than a book of recipes {although the recipes are great}. It’s like a gardening book and a cookbook all wrapped into one. It’s written by Britain’s foremost food writer: Nigel Slater. He gives great gardening tips right along side some tasty recipes. Plus, he’s British so of course I’m going to love him! Food to Live By: Myra Goodman has been growing organic food for over twenty years and cooking with it, too. This book is a go-to favorite for all things organic. Plus, she includes hundreds of recipes, ideas, shopping and cooking tips, and health notes. It’s the organic lovers dream cookbook!

So there you have my favorites. Now I want to know what’s missing from my shelf. What are you favorite cookbooks? What am I missing out on?

~Mavis