Cookbooks, Etc.

[dwanollah]

kokopelli said:

A Mommie Dearest Party?? Awesome! Could you share the details from the book when/if you get a chance, Dwanollah, please? Thanks!

We are planning a "girls slumber party" (you're NEVER too old for for a slumber party) to break in a a friend's new media room. We were going to do a whole Jacqueline Susann thing but I LOVE the idea of incorporating a Mommie Dearest twist.

ONLY IF I'M INVITED!

I'll dig out the recipes this afternoon, and see if I can scare up the book that has all of the Valley of the Dolls party stuff, too. (Me and huntergrayson have been plotting to have a VotD/BtVotD party for ages. Ah, someday....)

I have a whole 3 ring binder full of stolen recipes.

Me too! Well, not all stolen, but, yeah, I had a couple boxes of magazines (Victorian mag was great) saved solely for the recipes, and a couple years ago I finally got 'em all into a binder. Along with all of the stuff I used to scribble down from cookbooks during my breaks when I was working at the bookstore 15 years ago, the Christmas cookie recipes I started hording when I was 14, the recipes I've printed up from here and from Hissyfit back in the day....

[viridian]

eataknobatnight said:

Why were people so obsessed with gelatin in the 40's and 50's and 60's? I love to thumb through old cookbooks, and I'm always mouth-agape at the sheer number of "molds" that people used to make. It always makes me wonder: what will people be aghast about when they read our cookbooks, in the future?

Our "family recipe", made every year for Thanksgiving since the 50s, is a lime jello mold. If I hadn't grown up with the stuff the recipe would probably make me recoil in horror. However, it's actually quite tasty and has a pretty seafoam color. Festive!

Supposedly Jell-O became popular due to the Depression, since it made such a cheap dessert. Maybe all the gelatin molds were a carryover of that trend, but just tarted up for the more affluent post-WWII era?

[SGleason]

Oh, I love Fashionable Foods. The dog tore up the cover, though - bad Ethel!

In the late 80s I was a cook for a retirement residence; that was an interesting foray into cookbooks which dealt with cooking for 100 people who wanted:
*Organ meats
*Savory gelled dishes like aspic, and cauliflower/lemon, etc.
*Prunes
*Diabetic treats


You know what these recipes all had? Accent, which is good old MSG. (but no salt!)

[sammybee]

I looove cookbooks! A recent favorite is I Like You by Amy Sedaris. It's a great read, and the recipes are pretty good, I love the cupcakes.

The Gourmet cookbook is great, very comprehensive. And it has the recipe for Ruth Reichl's pancakes which are amazing (an entire stick of butter and it makes 8 medium pancakes!). Any book Marcella Hazan wrote about Italian cooking is great and I'm a lame-o who adores Martha Stewart and her many books.

I just ordered Wild Women Throw A Party, thanks Dwan.

[Daisy Pusher]

dwanollah said:

kokopelli said:

A Mommie Dearest Party?? Awesome! Could you share the details from the book when/if you get a chance, Dwanollah, please? Thanks!

We are planning a "girls slumber party" (you're NEVER too old for for a slumber party) to break in a a friend's new media room. We were going to do a whole Jacqueline Susann thing but I LOVE the idea of incorporating a Mommie Dearest twist.

ONLY IF I'M INVITED!

I'll dig out the recipes this afternoon, and see if I can scare up the book that has all of the Valley of the Dolls party stuff, too.

Thank you! And, of course, you must come! Bring your own vodka bottle and your best Neely O'Hara impression.

I personally can't get into the Jell-O thing at all. The texture just squicks me out. Jell-O shots, and snorting it up my nose once in college to freak out a less adventuresome coworker, is the extent of my experience with it. But I love to see the vintage cookbooks with all the lamentable pictures of gelatin salads.

And aspic? Eeek.

OK, one cookbook I have not gotten any use out of yet is The Silver Spoon. Does anyone else have that one, and if so, do you find that you use it? I jumped at it once I learned it was being translated into English, but I haven't really used it at all. I just end up back with Marcella Hazan instead.

[cantienne]

That's the classic Italian cookbook, right? I remember seeing a review for the translation that said it was a little problematic and hard to follow. La Bonne Cuisine - another in the genre of older cookbooks given new translations - came out in the US around the same time; like you with Silver Spoon, I have yet to use it. It's interesting, but involved, and there's a lot of info I can't use (not a big eater of organ meats, for example).

[Daisy Pusher]

cantienne said:

That's the classic Italian cookbook, right? I remember seeing a review for the translation that said it was a little problematic and hard to follow. La Bonne Cuisine - another in the genre of older cookbooks given new translations - came out in the US around the same time; like you with Silver Spoon, I have yet to use it. It's interesting, but involved, and there's a lot of info I can't use (not a big eater of organ meats, for example).

Yes, that is the one. I love looking through it, but it's simply not practicable, in my opinion.

I hear what you are saying about La Bonne Cuisine. I checked it out of the library when it was first released in the US and while I was intrigued by it, I didn't see myself using it, so I couldn't justify the purchase (says she with the criminally overgrown collection).

For day to day, I always seem go back to The Gourmet Cookbook or How to Cook Everything, or ATK's The Best Recipes.

[tiller]

Have you all seen the Gallery of Regrettable Foods book or website? The mind reels at what some people find appetizing.

Speaking of Jello, one of the most horrifying recipes I ever saw was corned beef Jello mold. I believe it involved lemon Jello and mustard. Who can come up with that?

[Deleted]

I got my parents the Gallery of Regrettable Food book for Christmas a couple of years ago - it's hilarious. Now my mom keeps turning up at family gatherings with the hardboiled egg penguins. I have created a monster!

at a rough guess, I probably have about 50 cookbooks. And one I keep coming back to is whatever edition of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook I have - so much of the time I don't want fancy, I just want simple recipes that almost always work and don't make me feel like a huge food loser because I want to use a few convenience foods here and there, like canned beans. Joy of Cooking gets good use as a reference, and I do like How to cook Everything. Those three are my go-to books.

I have a couple of Rick Bayless's books, because lord I love Mexican food, but I have a hell of a time getting ingredients around here, so I don't use them as much as I'd like.

[nadia]

I don't have a single cookbook. Granted I don't have my own kitchen either, living with the parents and all. I'd love to learn how to cook more, better dishes. What is one cookbook you couldn't live with out, or you think would be good for a novice? I'd like something that had a good variety of stuff, a lot of different kinds of food. Main dishes, sides, desserts, Italian, Mexican, etc.

ETA: My boyfriend's mother makes meat jello. I don't know how she does it or what she puts in it, but it's just this clear gel with meat inside it.