Love teh second one. Those are words to live by.

Yes, the second one is profound, hard to do, but we should strive by it. The first one? OMG I have seen some horrible cooking books and have to wonder if someone is sitting in a room somewhere, just pulling things out of their cupboards and putting them together to publish a book of "different" meals, hoping to pump out a few more residuals. I see a good one once in a blue moon and will spring for them, but I live by my cooking bibles..........Joy of Cooking 1945 and Gladys Taber's Stillmeadow.

I second The Joy of Cooking. I just used mine to make a strawberry rhubarb pie. I noticed that the original book came out in 1931- my birth year! While cleaning out my grandson's apartment he had in college, I found another treasure, The New American Cookbook. About the same as "Joy" but I just couldn't throw away a perfectly good cookbook. This one was published in 1941. I hardly ever use a recipe to cook anymore. After all these years I just sort of wing it. Sometimes I will check several books and then proceed from there. OK, I'll stop now.

Oh, I respectfully disagree with the first quote - of course, one can imbue a cooking book with moral or political or any ideologies. I have German cook-book, it was published in 1935, during the Hitler area, and yes, commentaries on ingredients and recipes sometimes take you to "true Germans don't need to disguise their food with fancy sauces" a swipe at the French, of course, and "simple, good German ingredients for wholesome meals", you get the idea?
The book is very good otherwise, at least for the times when canning and preserving was widely practiced, refrigeration was non-existent and much cooking was done on wood- or more likely coal-burning ranges - interesting read, and I even use a couple of recipes.
OT: The book has a recipe for Mais (corn) and it shall be boiled for 2 hours (!), obviously not sweet corn - it was never served in my family, so I don't know.

I do love the second quote and try to live by it.

I don't remember sweet corn even being grown in Europe when I lived there. I'd have to be pretty hungry to cook field corn and it doesn't surprise me they say two hours. LOL. My SIL said the first time he ate sweet corn was in Cypress when some American soldiers invited him and a few of his friends to a 4th of July celebration. It was the first time he ate watermelon too. He loves both, btw. We still tease him at the 4th of July cookouts, and he takes it good with good nature.