No, I did not/do not get the annual cookbooks. I have thought about it, however. I do have all the magazines that I had subscribed to though. I thumb through them all the time. I finally quit the subscription because I was becoming too obsessive about finding that d*** tooth pick they hid in mag! Drove me crazy when I couldn't find it.

I occasionally get Cooking Light magazine. In past Bon Appetite, etc.

But now if I need a recipe, we check these 2 priority websites:
Cooking Light magazine and epicurious.com (which is Bon Appetite and Gourmet magazine recipes combined together).

However we tend to actively look for a recipe if planning a menu for special occasion (ie. birthday, Christmas, etc.) or if there is a particular local fruit/veg in season that we don't have often but want to try something different.

I do also have a few cookbooks from past..most of it fusion cooking or all traditional ethnic cuisine dishes. But in the end, it's rare I've actually cooked from those books.

But most times, we just draw recipes from our heads and make things up abit. Between the 2 of us, we can draw upon some family-based ethnic dishes that we know off the top of our heads.

A friend of mine got me a subscription to Cook's Illustrated for Christmas. I really like it as it not only gives great recipes in it, but it gives history, instructionals, and great tips. I like reading it from cover to cover. I recently bought one of the hard back copies of Cooking Light's Annual Recipe book at a library sale. It was .25 cents. What a bargain. I'll go back and get more of them, for sure.

Cooking Light - that's what I need!

I once got the annual Southern Living cook books. They were great. All the recipes were scrumptious and the photos of the food made me drool. I recently got rid of some while going through stuff, but saved maybe two of my favorites. The book is a collection of all the reicpes that were in the Southern Living magazine for that year.

I have a freidn who has all fifty million of them - at least it looks like that many on her shelf. She's a darn good cook.

Oh I forgot to mention that I too spent many minutes looking for that darn toothpick, Cookie. Mom and I would make a contest out of it. Whoever found it first, called the other one and taunted them withe info...made them beg for the page number it was on. How funny is that? Sigh...I miss that! Never did win a blasted thing though. Did you?