Although I don't cook (my partner does all the cooking) I have a couple of cookbooks that I use occasionally - one is vegetarian Cajun recipes and the other is a dessert cookbook that uses no sugar (honey, molasses, etc. is used instead). I also have my Mom's old English cookbook - I think it is Women's Institute. I recently acquired one we sold at the Humane Society as a fundraiser - it has fun recipes for people and for pets. It's gathering dust on the shelf along with all the others! LOL

My first was Better Homes and Gardens. Now, when I want to feel saintly, I use my South Beach Diet cookbooks.

I have several, and have three favorites:
*Justin Wilson's Homegrown Louisiana
*Texas Home Cooking
*International Cookbook (Betty Crocker)

My favorite is also Sundays at the Moosewood. But I have a James Beard book from years back which is my "bible" for all the basics. I also keep a Joy of Cooking around and about 30 ethnic cookbooks.

I tend to read them, too, and never really follow a recipe completely. I use them to get basic ideas, then sort of make it up depending on the ingredients I have on hand.

My first? I don't remember the names (I still have it, but I can't find anything right now) but one was a vegetarian soup cook book and the other a tantric bread book. Made the best bread! Those days are over, tho.

I have cookbooks running out the ying yang. I absolutely LOVE reading them. I have all of Taste of Home yearly recipe books for the past 10 or 15 years, Better Homes and Garden, Betty Crocker's, and on and on and on...

My favorite though is called Calling All Cooks and it was done by the BellSouth Operators a bazillion years ago.

I have another one, Mrs. Mary Bo Bo's Boarding House Cookbook which was done by ah...Mrs. Mary...but it is from the restaurant in the town of Lynchburg, Tennessee where the Jack Daniels distillery is located. Their food is out of this world.

I also have one, can't think of the name of it, but it has all of the secret recipes like the batter for KFC, Red Lobster's Cheese Biscuits, TGIFriday's stuff, and other well-known restaurants...it's a fun one.

I also have a cookbook project in the works. I'll reveal more as it takes wings.

There is a Womans organisation in Scotland "The Womans Rural Institute" similar to the English "Womans Institute" of Calendar girls fame.The cookbook from that is my favourite.
Older editions have the member and home county beside their recipe.Indeed there are several options for each item.
Starters soups and meals then baking.jams marmalade bottling freezing.Each county has an emblem and there are competitions locally then wider afield.
My copy of the WRI Cookbook is forty years old. and has recipes telling how to make an old hen fit for eating.Poor hen no doubt at the end of her laying days.All the recipes are foolproof.
Do women elsewhere meet like this..? once a month.When I was a young wife I had suppressed giggles at the start of the meeting..such serious attitudes (to my unformed brain)
I dont go to the meetings now but support it fully in other ways.
Mountain ash

I have so many cookbooks; really need to go through them and give
some away. Hard to dust all of them LOL!
But I love that old Joy of Cooking!

Speaking of cooking & recipe following, LOl everytime my MIL eats something I've cooked she asks for the recipe. After I give it to her she always says: " And What did you do to it?" I can't seem to reisit the urge to tweak recipes.

JJ...you're working on a cookbook? Goodness, woman, when do you find the time?

Who has been to Savanah to Lady and Son's (aka Paula Deen) restaurant? larry and I went but could not get a seat...so popular....but, my ex-DIL gave me one of her cook books. Her food is delicious but goodness...loaded with real butter and true southern fat.
I have to say I LOVE cooking at christmas and go stupid in the baking department. Last year I baked so much that I had tons of left overs (cookies of all sorts, cakes, etc.). maybe this year I'll try making candies...or not.
I love the Christmas baking mags that come out around October.
I'm still looking for that melt-in-your-mouth coconut cake recipe Mamaw made when I was a child. Does anyone have a coconut cake recipe that is to die for?

JJ is it a funny cook book?
I have a cook book where my comments are a trip up memory lane. I wrote on the side who I experimented the recipe on, what occasion it was, and if it was blech or hmmm good. I got quite a few blah and yucky comments. Meanwhile I think I can read a recipe and tell if it will taste good or not.