Cookbooks I can't live without.

I would make an amazing housewife. Just ask my old roommate, Lindsay. I went through an unemployed period after college, and Lindsay worked for Smith Barney. Since I had nothing else to do with my time, I spent my days pondering what we were going to fix for dinner and getting it ready. Times have since changed-- I'm employed, Lindsay's not (she's in school!), we're both married-- but I still love to cook.

I also love to collect cookbooks. Few things in this world hold my attention like a really well designed cookbook. Rule number one: it must have pictures. Cookbooks need to be visually pleasing in my book. I'm instantly suspicious of a cookbook that doesn't have pictures. There are exceptions to this rule, the main one being The Joy of Cooking, but I'll get to that later.  Rule number two: it needs to have ingredients that you can actually find in the grocery store. This stems from growing up in a small town in South Carolina, where running to the Asian market wasn't exactly an option.

I've never had much use for coffee table books-- they're gigantic, they're expensive, and my coffee table is crowded enough without a 1000 page tome on fashion adding to the mess. But cookbooks-- especially beautiful and fun cookbooks-- make ideal coffee table books.

I'll be writing this post in segments, since I have too many books to name and not enough time to do so. Without further ado... (drumroll) Here are ones that I love:

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA:

The Joy of Cooking, by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker (image courtesy of amazon.com).

If you have a stove, you need this book. I have yet to find a cooking question this book cannot answer.  The Rombauer-Beckers give you the basics-- how to prepare and how to simply cook the ingredient-- then they elaborate with recipes that incorporate it. Currently my bookmark is on page 104, lentil soup.  Need to know how to cook kohlrabi? Have no idea what kohlrabi is? Joy of Cooking. (Kohlrabi, by the way, appears to be a cross between a turnip and cabbage, but is neither a root or a leafy vegetable. In fact, it is a "swollen stem". True story!)

To be continued...