Tuesday Top Ten: My Favorite Cookbooks

Today I thought I'd share some of my "go to" cookbooks that provide me with lots of inspiration to make great food!

1. Sharing Grace This cookbook is by the Executive Director of P31, LeAnn Rice. LeAnn also shares recipes on her blog www.shecooks.org. Check out both of them!

2. Taste Of Home magazine I have subscribed to this magazine off and on throughout my married life. As of Christmas-- thanks to a gift from my mom-- I am back "on" with getting it. I have so many clipped favorites from my years of subscribing to this magazine collected in my recipe notebook.

3. Super Fast Slow Cooker Recipes (really any Gooseberry Patch cookbook is good but if I had to pick just one, this one would be it. I collect these cookbooks-- it's sort of embarrassing how many I have.

4. Fix It And Forget It Recipes For Entertaining Since I have a big family the "entertaining" part of this mostly just means larger portions that are just right for my crowd. I have made many recipes from this cookbook. It's one I will just pull out and start jotting down things to cook for the week when I am making my menu.

5. The Cake Mix Doctor This is a go-to for desserts. Easy cakes in a variety of flavors that all start with a box mix-- yet taste nothing like one when you're done. My husband really really dislikes box mixed cakes but he will eat these, which should tell you something. My friend Shari Braendel's birthday cake is in this cookbook-- she asked me to make her an orange cake and I thought "What?? Who asks for an orange cake??" I went to this trusty volume and found one and it was dee-lish with fresh squeezed orange juice in the glaze that went over it. We all barely refrained from licking our plates.

6. Cooking With Class This is only available used now but this locally produced cookbook is a classic you will find on many cookbook shelves in kitchens across our fair city. I have both volumes. Buy them if you can find them. The first volume is where my banana bread recipe came from!

7. The Pioneer Woman Cooks Her cinnamom roll recipe is in here. And many, many others. With pictures. I like pictures. I like her humor. This is a cookbook you want to get in bed with at night and read before you fall asleep. It will definitely give you sweet dreams.

8. Southern Plate Christy's new cookbook is similar to PW's in that it also has lots of pictures. My aunt made the depression bread pudding and said it was wonderful. Again, you had me with the pictures. And southern cooking. I love my southern cooking.

9. Rival CrockPot Three Books In One (Slow Cooker Favorites, Winning Slow Cooker Recipes, Slow Cooker Recipes For All Occasions) I have so many of these recipes marked to try. This one seems to have a lot of Mexican themed recipes so if you like slow cookers and you like Mexican, buy it. I found mine on a bargain table at Barnes and Noble or somewhere like that but I've included a link to buy it at Amazon.

10. Granny's Drawers This one also appears to be out of print, but there were used copies to be had on Amazon. I almost forgot this one because I've-- gulp!-- lost mine. I think I loaned it to someone and it wasn't returned. Which means I will be buying one of the used copies at Amazon posthaste. This cookbook is actually written by a family friend a couple of times removed. (My step-sister's husband's mom's best friend's niece wrote it-- see what I mean?) From it I derived my brown rice casserole and learned how to cook a frozen turkey breast... while it's still frozen. This is worth the price of the cookbook right there.

Ok I hope maybe out of this list you'll find one little treasure to purchase and peruse. It's been fun to take stock of my cookbooks and figure out which ones are my faves... and why. Many of my faves are the church ones you can't buy off Amazon, so I couldn't list them here. Why tell you about something you can't have.

And my most favorite resource is the one I made myself-- the notebook of all my clipped recipes I've collected over the years.

Someday I will write a cookbook for you guys. Just as soon as I get the time...