I want to get some good reference cook books, especially a good crockpot/slow cooker cook book.

What are your all time favorite cook books?

My all time favorite cook book is "the Key to chinese Cooking" by Irene Kuo. This book covers all the basics and some advance recipes also. My dh is Chinese and I've had friends ask me if he taught me to cook Chinese. Please, not in theis lifetime.

Sarah in MD

I used to collect cookbooks but had to cut back when I ran out of space. I only keep vegetarian cook books on the shelf now.

My absolute favorites are Nava Atlas cook books. I love Vegetariana and have all three versions of that one. I also use The Passionate Vegetarian quite a bit. I have MasterCook on my computer and just love that for the search function. I've always wanted to be able to find recipes based on what I had in teh fridge

I love love love "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittmann- he writes for the NY Times. It has tons of recipes including stuff like how to roast a chicken and things that normal cookbooks sort of assume you know how to do. Every recipe i've made has worked great. He has a "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" too which i don't have but i bet it is good too...

I have tons of local (New Orleans) cookbooks, but I guess my favorites are
Who's your Mama, Are you Catholic and Can you Make a Roux?
and LA Bouche Creole. I've been able to adapt many recipes into SBD friendly ones by replacing flour with wg flour, butter with olive oil and using brown rice instead of white.

I love cookbooks and have a bunch of old ones. The ones I actually use a lot though are my SB cookbooks, The Vegetarian Epicure, and Jane Brody's Good Food Gourmet. For basics, I think you can't beat the Joy of Cooking.

I love - The Barefooted Contessa Cookbooks - but they are not SB friendly by all means, - butter, butter and more butter.
take care
Sophie

I really google around for crockpot recipes. It seems you can do so much in them. I have one good book but its at my other house. When I get back, I'll post it.

Agreed, I have both the older and newer versions.

I love cookbooks. Thanks for starting this thread, Sarah. I have lots of great Chinese cbs for reference having lived in Hong Kong.
Recipe Rescue-Healthy New Approaches to Traditional Favorites is a fav because it was inspirational in that I started taking many of our family recipes and turning them into healthy foods. Now I am modifying again to make them SB friendly.

I WISH-I had a Julia Child Collection-just because-she was truly unique and inspirational. We watched her as kids and I think she was key in my love of all things in the kitchen which did culminate in my owning a K/G store.

ETA-I've been checking lots of cookbooks out at the library lately. It give me the opportunity to peruse lots of different things.

I haven't had much luck with cookbooks. I find that I usually like a few things in each one, but don't really buy into the whole food philosophy of the author, so about 80% of it is useless to me. I do use the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook quite a bit - the classic one with the red and white gingham cover. It has just about all the American classics in there. I love local cookbooks from churches, organizations, or whatnot - people tend to submit their star recipes and you can find some really good stuff!

I adore Cooking Light and I get that magazine each month. I rip out recipes to try and have come up with a big binder of the best of them. I like them b/c you can go on the internet and see the reviews...I am a big fan of reviews, so I also get most of my dishes from Allrecipes.com and foodnetwork.com as well as cookinglight.com.

Though I enjoy cookbooks, my favorite source of recipes is Cooking Light magazine and their free website (www.myrecipes.com). I am a big fan, however, of the Moosewood vegetarian cookbooks.

I'm a big fan of a cookbook called Cooking A to Z, as it explains basic cooking terms, techniques, and ingredients, then gives you recipes that use them. It's all orgainzed alphabetically, so it's very easy to find what you're looking for in a second.

Most of the time, though, I use the internet to find recipes, as it takes less time than paging through cookbooks.

Beachgal, I do the exact same thing. I never can find what I have in the fridge in any of my cookbooks so I go online and type in what ever I have and see what recipe comes up.

Thanks everyone for you suggestions.
Sarah in MD

I always like the Weight Watchers cookbooks too - they put out an annual that's a collection of the year's best recipes.

This is one of those "duh" comments, but I really like checking out cookbooks at the local library and then I copy my favorite recipes. It's a good way to get a feel for which authors or editors you like.