Happy Monday! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are ready for a new week! It was quite an eventful weekend for me and just to share a little bit of news, in about a month, I’ll be cooking & baking up in a bigger kitchen! We will be moving out of our condo/apartment and into a single family home just a stone’s throw from the Chicago border – literally! I’m a little sad that we will be giving up our Chicago address but the up side is that we won’t have to share any walls with neighbors!
With our upcoming move, I’m dreading the painstaking task of packing. One room I’m not looking forward to packing is our second bedroom, which is where I have my vast collection of cookbooks. I have so many that to make all the dishes I’ve bookmarked in my cookbooks could easily last a lifetime! Sometimes it makes me wish that I didn’t collect so many cookbooks and solely use recipes found online.
One cooking/baking resource I rely on is Cook’s Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen. They have such informative tips, tricks and hints, as well as helpful product reviews. What I really like about Cook’s Illustrated & America’s Test Kitchen is that they have so many mediums to reach their audience (taken from Cook’s Illustrated):
Magazines: More than 1.3 million home cooks rely on Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines to provide trusted recipes that work, honest ratings of equipment and supermarket ingredients, and kitchen tips.
Cookbooks & DVDs: From our best-selling The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook and The New Best Recipe, to Annual Editions of our magazines and DVD sets for each season of our television shows, we offer more than 70 cookbooks and DVD sets from the editors of America’s Test Kitchen.
Television Shows: Each week, the cast of America’s Test Kitchen brings the recipes, testings, and tastings from Cook’s Illustrated magazine to life on our public television series. With more than 2 million viewers per episode, we are the most-watched cooking show on public television. And now you can also tune in to watch the editors of Cook’s Country magazine on our new television series filmed in our Vermont farmhouse kitchen.
Websites: Our websites allow members online access to 16 years worth of recipes, menus, up-to-date equipment and ingredient ratings, and video content, including episodes of America’s Test Kitchen. Members can easily search for, and print, recipes and shopping lists, build menus, watch videos, plus more.
So for this week’s Foodie Freebie Friday, a lucky reader will get a 1 year gift subscription to either the Cook’s Illustrated Magazine or Website!
Some guidelines:
– Giveaway is only for those who live in the United States. My apologies to my international readers!
– You must have a valid email address so that you can be contacted if you win.
To enter the giveaway, leave a comment about:
– Do you have a favorite cookbook and/or cooking/baking resource? What makes it a favorite of yours?
Deadline: Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 12 midnight CST.
One Winner will be randomly chosen by Random.Org’s Interger Generator based on the number of your comment and will be announced on Friday, February 27, 2009. Good luck!
Cooking Light (and the My Recipes website) is my favorite source. I have about a 90% success rate with their recipes!
Hi Joelen! I don’t know that I could pick just one favorite, but one cookbook that I have really liked for a long time is Moosewood’s Lowfat Favorites. It’s a vegetarian cookbook with very creative use of ingredients and some great flavor combinations. This is the source of the very popular Sweet Potato and Black Bean Burritos!
My favorite cooking resource is allrecipes. I love to compare recipes, read reviews, and decide what aspects make a given recipe good or bad.
Although I’m normally a lurker, my favorite recipe resource is all the WC ladies! I don’t have a favorite cookbook, so I rely on others’ tried and true recipes. The WC girls rock!
I don’t know if I can pick a fav. My fav recently is Dorie’s cookbook. But in all honesty, I get most of my recipes from my Google Reader.
Recently I get most of my recipes from blogs. I’ve found some really great ideas from them!
I get most of my recipes from food blogs, but my favorite other source is the food network magazine!
My favorite source is Cook’s Illustrated, especially for cooking. I know that I will get tried and true recipes and techniques for them. For baking, I like cookbooks like The Pastry Queen or Dorie’s book because it is a bit more on the creative side.
Um…my favorite cookbook is by Cooks Illustrated! Seriously, The New Best Recipe changed the way I cook and think about food. I’m a far better cook because of that book.
My favorite cookbook is really all of the food blogs I read. I get so many great ideas on there!
Wonderful giveaway, as always!
My favorite cooking resource has to be all the WC ladies’ blogs. All of you are such an inspiration and I know I can trust your recipes. I also really like allrecipes.com because it has that fun Quantity Modifier feature, which is great since I am usually cooking for 2 and most recipes are for 4 or more people.
I get most of my recipes from food blogs, but when it comes to needing instructions on the basics, I turn to my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook!
Hey Joelen! It is really hard to just pick one resource as I use many. I love cooking light magazine (subscription) as well as myrecipes.com. I also frequent a lot of WC nestie blogs for recipes, tips and ideas. One of my favorite “go-to” and “no -fail” cookbooks would be “Back to the Table” by Art Smith. It is simple, honest cooking.
My favorite cookbook is my America’s Test Kitchen Family cookbook because I haven’t made anything yet from it that we didn’t like! Testing and testing really pays off!
I don’t think I can choose just one! But I regularly use the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, The New Best Recipe, and the Williams Sonoma website for recipes. These are definitely my go to cookbooks/website if I am looking for a delicious recipe.
My desert island book will always be Joy of Cooking.
It’s the perfect resource. It has all the info you need, and not too much that you don’t. (Who knows when you’ll need to skin a squirrel?!)
My favorite cookbooks are the Taste of Home annual books. My mom buys me one every year for Christmas and I look forward to looking through it, bookmarking my favorite recipes to try. I love everything about the books–pictures, categories, variety…
My favorite cookbook is my great-grandmother’s – The American Woman’s Cookbook. It was the first cookbook she bought as a young bride and her famous biscuits, Lady Baltimore Cake, refrigerator cookies and tons more all come from there. I love it!
-Amy
http://www.singforyoursupperblog.com
The Joy of Cooking is my cooking & baking bible. I am not sure how a household can survive without a copy of this book! My copy is very worn, very loved. I think it's great to know the basics so that you can feel comfortable with your skills, and build on them with your own unique creativity.
That’s a tough one! I definitely utilize all of the fabulous WC blogs to keep me supplied with more than enough recipes. But I also love my BHG monster cookbook. This bad boy has everything from extremely beginner recipes to top chef!
My favorite resource has to be the internet since you can find just about anything out on the web. 🙂
But if I had to pick a hardcopy resource, it would be the America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks. I have 2 and use them all the time.
Cooking Light is my favorite resource. The magazine and the website. It would never think you could lighten up some of my favorite recipes but they do a great job of it!
Congrats on the move!
I think my favorite resource is my google reader. I LOVE having so many diverse recipes at my fingertips. With just shy of 300 blog subscriptions, I can find almost anything I need.
My favorite cooking resource at the moment is Bon Appetite magazine. I love the creative dishes they come up with!
I don’t know how to pick a favorite today. I love getting recipes from my friends and family. And I read food blogs ALL THE TIME and just star them on my google reader. It’s been great for me. If I was to pick a favorite, I’d say that it’s the better homes and garden all american cook cook.
Picking a favorite cookbook would be like picking a favorite child. I have too many and probably don’t need a magazine subscription, but this is one magazine I have never subscribed to. So, thanks for the opportunity to win! I suppose if I had to whittle down to only one cookbook, I love my good ole red plaid BHG cookbook. One of my first ever and it’s always reliable.
I would have to say my America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook along with Cooking Light. I like having a recipe that you can trust.
Boy do I hate moving. Hubby & I have moved 4 times in the last 5 years. And we have one more to go, but it's out last since we are buying a new home soon.
It's really hard to pick one favorite cookbook, but I do love my cake bible, and the new "Baked" cookbook by the bakery of same name in brooklyn.
good luck with the move! I hate packing sooooo much.
Cooking forums! I love seeing recipe exchanges and ideas posted on message boards.
I definitely favor the web to cookbooks, and usually get my recipes from allrecipes.com or from any of the food blogs I follow. (Plus google is your best friend!) I have had my eye on Cooks Illustrated though – I’ve heard great things about it!
My recipe source is my google reader! I like knowing the tried and true recipes with color photos and commentary. However, I love the 1080 Recipes I got for Christmas. The Spanish woman in me comes out every time I use it!
Most of the time, I pull recipes from blogs. I LOVE the internet. However, my new favorite baking cookbook is “The Sweeter Side of Amy’s Bread.” Written by the owner of Amy’s Bread in NYC – it has FABULOUS recipes as well as tips for baking and stories about their NYC neighborhood! Entertaining and educational!
-Christina
I love websites and mags but my favorite resource is my copy of The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook. It is a purely sentimental choice – I remember helping my parents cook lots of Chinese dinners and their dog eared and much stained copy. Their willingness to try new things inspired me to be adventurous as well.
I have an extensive supply of cookbooks, In fact, go to my blog to see my top 10. I also use Gourmet magazine, Bon Appetite and food blogs. Food Network will do in a pinch, too. I love Cook’s Illustrated, it’s a wonderful resource.
Giada’s Everyday Italian is my favorite cookbook, but recently I’ve been using mostly blogs, especially Pioneer Woman. I love her step by step pictures!
The internet! Specifically foodnetwork.com and allrecipes! It is really great to have all this information available on the internet!
The American Test Kitchen ‘Best of’ is the favorite in my kitchen! Great for cooking and baking. I love the chocolate chip cookies and the lemon meringue pie.
I love to collect cook books as well, but have to say that my favorite cooking/baking resource is definitely foodnetwork.com. I watch a lot of the shows on tv & love it that when I see something I want to try I can just go print it off!
Moving is awful – but if you are moving into a bigger kitchen your life is about to get better! The America’s Test Kitchen “best of” cookbook is the most used in my kitchen. We started with the American Classics – and liked it so much we had to upgrade to the big guy. My favorite recipe is the Lemon Meringue (found in both). Now that we have both – my husband and I don’t have to share as often! My favorite cookbook to read is the Pie and Pasty Bible (for today anyways!)
My Google Reader is really one of my favorites! Most things have a picture with narrative instructions, and they are accessible from anywhere I have internet access. I love being able to star and come back later (without folding pages over:)
I love allrecipes.com. I love that the recipes are rated, that you can read reviews and that there are tons of catagories (like poultry, holidays, etc…)
I love Cook’s Illustrated! My favorite baking resource is the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion. It is so detailed that it makes the science of baking simple!!! Good luck with packing!
I use several different sources for recipes, but my favorites are foodnetwork.com and ATK. I also get a lot of great ideas from the blogs I read – thank goodness for Google Reader!
I have no one favorite recourse – it so many sources. Sometimes I look into a book, another time looking for some recipe on Internet, but most often I found what I’m looking for on my favorite culinary blogs
Before becoming involved with the online food community, my favorite place to get recipes was from Cooking Light (I had a subscription to the mag as well as the website.)
Now though, I would have to say that my favorite place to get recipes is from all the cooking boards…so many talented women with incredible blogs filled with tried and true favorites!
My favorite cookbook is a collection of recipes that my grandmother used that my family put together when she died. The recipes are all family classics.
I love “The New Best Recipe” from Cook’s Illustrated! It’s so interesting to read HOW they came up with the recipes and the other methods they tried. It’s such a valuable resource!
I love Cooking Light. I find the recipes to be easy and use fresh ingredients. I also love a cookbook (or really a collection of recipes) from my mom. She made it in a 3-ring binder and it has lots of the recipes I loved growing up. I just made her spice cookies last night!
I swear by two cookbooks: The Better Homes and Gardens plaid cookbook (it has everything I could want for the basic stuff) and a cookbook put together by a church in the town I grew up in. The church cookbook is filled with recipes from people I know and care about, which makes it extra special. 🙂
I have a church cookbook “The St Clare’s Cookbook” from my church that is an absolute gold mine. I make something from it every week. My rice pudding is legendary, I got the recipe from the book, as well as some great chicken recipes.
For baking my favorite is Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. My favorite cooking resource is Cooking Light magazine.
I like Recipezarr. I like being able to sort recipes by rating.
mellisa.willis@sbcglobal.net
My favorite cookbook is the good ole trusty Better Homes and Gardens that I received in high school. I still use it often as it's a good reference of how to make everything from sauces to fish to candy. Sometimes I search for the perfect recipe and end up back at my BH&G cookbook because their recipes hold up well over time and produce great results time and time again.
i love cooking blogs in general. i love david lebovitz, smittenkitchen, and cooking illustrated websites. and of course yours!
My favorite cookbook right now is The Foods and Wines of Spain by Penelope Casas. It’s very inspiring!
I love Cooks Illustrated. I have the New Best Recipe Cookbook and everything I’ve made from there has turned out great.
I will have to break the rules and choose two! My first favorite is Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. It is a go to for basic recipes as well as new and exciting recipes. My other go to is The Joy of Cooking. My SIL bought it for me and I use it several times a month for new recipes.
My favorite magazine is Cooking Light but more and more, I am relying on finding what I need online. I like RecipeZaar and AllRecipes but I’ve been gravitating more and more toward food blogs. Why? Because most of the recipes have been made by others like me who are not necessarily professional chefs or food stylists!
Whenever I need a recipe that I don’t have to worry about what it would taste like, I grab one of my Paula Deen cookbooks. I also am in LOVE with my newest cookbook, American’t Test Kitchen’s baking cookbook.
Jane
My mom made me a cookbook with recipes from all my family and friends when I left home– I’ll never find a better book!
I absolutely love The Cookie Bible. Cookies are my favorite thing to bake and this book has never let me down!
Every time I’m asked this question, I say the same thing Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin cause it’s comfort food you can serve to company. Every single recipe in there is a show-stopping success. It’s not a “go-to” everyday kinda book.
Joelen, congrats! My favorite resource for cooking is foodnetwork and blogs since there are photos and tips.
I’m very fond of The Passionate Vegetarian. It’s written in such a personal manner and the recipes always come out great.
I love getting recipes from my google reader and foodnetwork! Saved me many times!
Picking one cookbook is so difficult with so many options out there. I would actually have to say that my Google Reader is my best resource because I have it so organized and there are so many things I have marked in there.
Hmmm…if I want to make something with an ingredient I have on hand, I consult my family, google reader, food blogs, do online searches, and then go back to my cookbooks. I really find (the new) Joy of Cooking meets a lot of my needs. Plus, I love eating healthy food — UC Berkeley’s Wellness Kitchen cookbook is great.
I agree with lot’s of others, I get most of my recipes from blogs! If I’m not getting a recipe off a blog, I probably emailed my mom to ask for it. I love being able to read people’s reactions to a dish along with the recipe. Comments can be helpful in deciding whether or not I want to make something.
I love all of Ina Garten’s cookbooks. I have learned so much from her cookbooks as well as her shows.
My favorite is allrecipes, but I’ve been starring all these food blog recipes that I’m dying to try out!
I like to use all recipes. There are so many recipes and it is so easy to find what you are looking for.
What a great giveaway! I’ll soak up just about any cookbook out there, but I got Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” for Christmas, and that sucker is fab.u.lous. LOVE it. Thanks for the giveaway!
Good luck on your move! My favorite cookbook is The Best of Cooking Light. I’ve got so many pages tagged in it, it’s a rainbow of colors.
My favorite “old standby” cookbook is The Joy of Cooking. I know I can always count on finding a basic recipe for just about anything I need, or instructions on how to cook a type of food. I surf the web for recipes all the time. Some of my favorite sites are Recipezaar.com, Epicurious.com, and MarthaStewart.com., but I usually start out by just Googling what I’m looking for, and I sometimes find very cool sites and blogs.
hubs and I love foodnetwork — we usually watch it, brainstorm a recipe and create or own, but not without the help of foodnetwork…we’ve created these awesome greek feta burgers that will knock your socks off! but would never have done it without them…
mariannakeough@hotmail.com
For cooking, I love my America's Test Kitchen cookbook. I find their commentary especially helpful, and a few times, reading their comments has taught me exactly what I've been doing wrong previously. For baking, I love my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook because a lot of the recipes there remind me of what my grandma used to make when I was growing up.
I tend to trust cookbooks/tv shows with a bit of science behind them, so Cook’s Illustrated (America’s Test Kitchen) is one of my favorites. I also love Alton Brown’s Good Eats.
I used to get all of my recipes from the internet, but I am starting to go to more cookbooks. I love seeing the vibrant pictures and the stories that accompany most recipes.
Congratulations on your new home! How exciting! My favorite go-to place is allrecipes.com. I can always seem to find SOMETHING to make on there. I like that you can sort by ingredients even! Good luck with packing!
i love cooking light! but i love cooks illustrated too 🙂
I recently subscribed to CI online and am loving all of their recipes and tips.
Hi Joelen!
I have fallen in love with my copy of the America’s Test Kitchen cookbook. It really gave me the confidence to try different things, to try baking, and to really enjoy cooking. I LOVE this book… it inspired me to make a roast chicken, something I really thought I couldn’t do!
That's a tough question, since I use recipes from all over the place! I really like Cook's Illustrated & Cook's Country, Ina Garten's books and the trusty Better Homes & Garden's cook book.
I really like allrecipes.com for finding recipes. My favorite feature is where you can list ingredients and it will give you recipes to choose from.
totally love Gourmet – the photography is awesome as are the diff. recipes.
I absolutely love Cooks Illustrated, too, and consult their books first when putting together a “master recipe.” But overall, I probably use Epicurious.com most for inspiration and dinner ideas.
I am very picky about my cookbooks. They can’t be willy-nilly thrown together cookbooks. Ones I like have been agonized over, recipes tweaked, pictures if a step is complicated or to show assembly, and consistent. Therefore, I have only 2 shelves of cookbooks. My alternative sources are allrecipes.com because I can read reviews of recipes before I make them. The reviews have to be taken with a grain of salt, but many describe what does or does not work in the recipe and how they modified it. From these details I can then use the recipe as a base and make my own modificaions. Some of my favorite recipes have come from there. Too bad they are still lacking a lot of ethnic recipes.
My current favorite resource is the nesties on WC. Beyond that, I really like recipezaar, and I just bought a Fanny Farmer cookbook and I’m sure I’ll get a lot of use out of it.
My family made a cookbook a couple of years ago that was made up of recipes out of my moms, aunts, great aunts, grandmothers & great grandmothers etc… It is my go-to resource for everything. They all grew up in Iowa farm country after imigrating over from several different European countries many many generations back…and the recipes are phenomenal and fail proof.
It’s so hard to pick one favorite cookbook or resource. One cookbook I constantly turn to, believe it or not, is Weight Watchers Takeout Tonight. The recipes there are great for replicating everything from diner food to Chinese takeout without the guilt. Other than that, I frequently check numberous blogs for ideas and Cooking Light magazine.
My favorite cooking resource is the internet (if that counts!). Between recipe and cooking websites, cooking blogs, and the nesties on the WC board, I am able to learn so much! I wouldn’t try to attempt nearly half of the recipes without it – I get such great ideas for our weekly menus and new recipes to try!
I was very excited when Cook’s Illustrated came out with their Best Light Recipe cookbook after my husband bought me the original one. They have the best recipe in there for Blue Cheese Dressing which I love. I love the whole cookbook and I don’t have to feel guilty with a lot of the recipes.
Hi Joelen! My favorite cooking resources (I couldn’t pick one) are cooking blogs and the reviews section of AllRecipes .. I love to read “tried and true” recipes from ladies/gentlemen who seem to have similar tastes and culinary interests as myself. Hope you have a great day!!
Hi there! I’m a lurker but I love your blog! And I love Cooks Illustrated. It’s probably one of the first places I look when I have a cooking question or problem. I also love watching their show on PBS. My second fav would be my mom’s cookbook that she’s put together over the years. There are so many great recipes from my childhood in there!
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Ruth
http://besttoddler.com