Whenever I get bored with my normal menu plan, like I am now, I turn to my cookbooks. I purged them pretty heavily right before we moved so I don’t have a lot left. But I did keep a couple that I really like:
Family Feasts includes the recipe Baked Ziti Casserole that I am making on Thursday if all goes according to plan. Ostyn also has a lot of salad dressing recipes that I like and baking kit recipes – like homemade pancake mix. She has some other really good ideas for make ahead breakfasts to simplify mornings. She gives a lot of tips for ways to reduce your grocery budget that would be good for a novice.
Don’t Panic More Dinner’s in the Freezer also has some yummy recipes. This week, I’m making their stromboli recipe and the quiche recipe. I love that the recipes are put in chart form so I could easily make 3, 6, or 9 of any given recipe if I so desired. Three is my limit, but I like the format so I easily see how many ingredients to use.
I don’t advocate buying a lot of cookbooks as I think you can find most recipes for free on the internet, but a few are nice to have. These are two of my trusty favorites. Do you have a favorite cookbook? I’d love to hear your recommendations!
By the way, no one paid me anything to write this and I didn’t write it so that you would buy the cook books…however, the Amazon links are links to my affiliate account and if you did purchase them through that link, I would make a small percentage of the sale.
About Michelle
Welcome! I'm Michelle and I'm glad you're here. Simplify, Live, Love is a blog about simple life in rural Iowa. We are a self-employed, frugal, green, mostly homeschooling family of 6 working to go off the grid on a modern day homestead in Eastern Iowa. Please subscribe for gardening tips, green living hints, recipes, fun giveaways, and frugal ideas. Thanks for stopping by.
Michelle, another great post. I will have to pick up these two. Thanks for the recommendation.
My favorites are any of the Cook's Illustrated Cookbooks. American Classics and Restaurant Favorites are my favorite. All of the pages are dogeared and written on. I love reading the science behind the recipes. I am one to fuss with recipes so I am always improving something. CI's recipes are good enough that I have made them for company without trying them first.
I love Luarel's Kitchen, The Veganomicon, The Art of Vegetarian Indian Cooking, Moosewood……the list goes on and on…..Oh! and believe it or not, The Joy of Cooking!
More cookbooks! It sounds like these are winners. The ones I use the most are LLL's Whole Foods for the Whole Family, From Julia Child's Kitchen, and Betty Crocker, 1947. My online favorites: glutenfreegoddess.com and epicurious.
I am going to look up those cookbooks at the library! thanks for the recommendations! I'm looking for ways to simplify dinner (like making and freezing meals) and always looking for ways to cut costs!
I don't really have a fav cookbook right now… been courting the Stone Soup blog (for recipes with 5 ingredients or less), a couple allergen-free cookbooks we have, and wanting to pacify my taste for middle eastern food cheaply by looking through what cookbooks I have for that… Also staring at the cookbook shelf thinking a purge is necessary.
I love any Ina Garten cookbook, along with the Joy of Cooking. I also like any book by Mark Bittman – the minimalist. I just purchased Kitchen Express – which is listed by the season and each recipe is one paragraph, that's it! (Eggplant, honey and breadcrumbs…so good!) I repeatedly borrowed this from our library until I broke down and bought it.
I am a bit of a cookbook hoarder, um, collector…and love food blogs too. Maybe we can list those next