Well I guess my first cook book had no pictures....so I learned to be confident in my ability to make a meal without a picture.
And I also, early on, read those super market magazines like Family Circle which are full of lame recipes and good pictures.
The way to the cure? Just leap in and cook...paint your own picture in your head...
Linda C

Although I prefer a picture, I will not relegate a recipe to the circular file if there is none.

I would have missed out on many of the things that I now make regularly had I done that!

When purchasing new cookbooks, however, I sometimes will pass by those that have no photos at all in favor of those with a photo of each recipe (ideally) or at least those with photos of some of the recipes.

Linda

Punamytsike I absolutely have the same syndrome! That's one reason I cook mostly soups and stews, lol!! But my desire to eat good fun food and my curiosity has provided the impetus to get me to plunge in and try something anyway. I've had a lot of notable flops, so I don't do a new recipe that requires a lot of manipulation in a crunch situation. I still have very little skill or patience for learning new cooking techniques just by reading. But fortunately, the Internet has become my good helpful friend. First, by using search engines to search for photos of dishes online, and now, even better, you can often find "how to" videos!! I still get a lot of recipes from FoodNetwork and other online shows for that reason, plus FoodNetwork has a lot of photos too. I also get a lot of recipes from magazines with photos and how to photos.

But my best cookbooks are still mostly words, some with diagrams. But they have a lot of simple dishes in them--soups, stews, quick breads, stir frys, simple pasta sauces. I learned to bake bread from illustrations and then just plunging in. Some things I have learned how to make from someone else, so now can follow written recipes for other versions. But I plunged into canning all on my own, although the Ball Blue Book I used as a guide did have illustrations of the basic techniques.

A good picture will always get my attention but I don't use a picture to make the decision about trying a recipe.

Most of my cookbooks have some pictures in them but most recipes don't have photos. I wouldn't make that a criteria for buying a cookbook but I do like some pictures. I'm more apt to buy a cookbook because I like the particular author or the particular cuisine.

It's the ingredients list that I look at first. If the ingredients appeal to me then I have no trouble making the dish without a picture. The second thing I look at is the Instructions, if they seem lengthy, time consuming or convoluted I won't touch the recipe no matter how good the dish looks.

I was just thinking about this the other day, punamytsike, in conjunction with the Cooking Light post. Why did I stop getting it?

I'm probably more like Sharon -- an ingredient reader, first. Length, some obscure ingredient that may never be used again, 4 Cups of peanut oil, etc. it's a no go.

I will say that I love to read people's personal comments regarding a recipe, particularly those church/regional cookbooks.

It's shameful how many cookbooks/magazines I have, but I love to peruse them. I've started going to the library.

Interesting question.

Cathy in SWPA

Interesting question. While I am a visual learner, I don't require a picture before trying a recipe, I scan the list of ingredients, then if the recipe passes the ingredients test, I check the complexity of the directions and balance that with my interest in the ingredients.

However, when I go to a restaurant, I will walk around checking out the food served before ordering. I have even left the restaurant based on my visual scan of the food--much to my DH's embarrassment.

I suppose I prefer cookbooks with lots of photos. But that's just the voyeur in me, I don't choose recipes from pics as a general rule. It is a fairly rare occurrence for me to follow a recipe exactly in any case.

The exception is when I'm beginning to learn a new cuisine. I have to feel comfortable with it's style and ingredients before I play around too much. In that case, a picture can be reassuring, as I have found them helpful in determining things like an individual's idea of the difference between "dice" and "chop" and in recognizing unfamiliar ingredients. Also, if my result looks radically different from the photograph, I know to reread and review what I did to determine whether it was I or the recipe that was in error. Mostly though, I think a picture is just rather like a blankie or teddy bear...not really needed, but comforting.

Once I begin to feel a bit comfortable with a cuisine, I can get a pretty good mental picture of how a dish will come out from reading the recipe.

I'm a visual person. Pictures are definitely preferred. However, so long as I can visualize in my head what the final outcome will look like, I don't shy away from the recipe. If I can't wrap my head around what its suppose to look like, then I won't make the recipe. (Ditto what Mustangs & Rachelellen said!)

If I'm reading a cookbook, I like pictures, it adds to my enjoyment of the book itself.

However, when I'm cooking, I don't require a picture. As LindaC mentioned, I've been sucked in by too many pretty pictures which were accompanies by mediocre recipes. The final product looked good but didn't meet my taste requirements.

Now I read the ingredient list and if it sounds like a combination I'd like, I'll try it. If there are ingredients I don't like, I try to think about possible substitutions, but I try to make a recipe as written the first time, before I start messing around with it.

Annie

Interesting....one of my favorite cook books is Glorious American Food by Christopher Idone. It's just beautiful...gorgeous pictures....but I have never made a recipe from it.
But it sure is eye candy!

Here is a link that might be useful: Glorious American Food

I too like to see a dish before I cook it but I do know that there are many wonderful cooks here and so I am more apt to try their recipes sight unseen if the ingredients are appealing to me.

Don't let that hold you back, for you will surely be missing out. That said, I really should get back to taking pictures, although I am not very good at it and it might make you shrink away anyway!

Sue

Ingredients first. I will not usually try a recipe that calls for boxes, can and bags of things. I don't have them, I'm not going to get them.
I like basic pantry items; flour, sugar, butter, salt, spices, veggies, meat, etc.

Instructions are next. Length, complication and style of describing things. I like simple.

General appeal. Will we eat it?

Photos. Love 'em, but not the deciding factor. I rarely use a cookbook at all, so it takes a lot of convincing! LOL I love to look though. I wish they'd put cookbooks in the Dr/Dentist office. I'd much rather browse that than a lot of "fluff" that's usually there.

And, I have to be honest.........
Recipes from here are tried often times based on the number of other CF'er's raving about it! LOL
NOT that I choose because everyone else is, but I'm sometimes convinced to try something that I might not otherwise when lots of others liked it!
I trust your taste!!! :-)
Mostly.
I still don't like mint with meat, but that's MY problem!!

Deanna

Come to think of it, the cookbooks I use the most have few pictures, but the ones I love to look at for inspiration (but seldom actually cook from) are full of gorgeous pictures. But then most of my favorite recipes do have pictures because they came from this forum where so many of the good cooks now have cameras. :)

As an aside, I have an acquaintance who interned with one of the food mags. She said after seeing what they did to get the pictures to come out looking so good, she would never trust a recipe photo in a magazine again. LOL!

But, no, I don't let the absence of a photo stop me unless it's a dish or technique so foreign to me that I have no idea what to expect. Then I'd come here and ask someone.

I guess I go more by ingredients, like "do I have most of those ingredients".

But more and more now, I go by internet reviews of recipes...

It is the ingredients that get my attention first. I can tell by the ingredients if the recipe is one that I will like.

But I do enjoy looking at cookbooks with beautiful pictures.

Ann

I've mostly given up on cookbooks and am slowly not renewing subscriptions to magazines. I find the recipes found on these several GW forums to be interesting enough to keep me happy. The recipes that attract me are ones I'm totally unfamiliar with or are compliceted/time consuming enough to peak my interest. Pictures are nice, but not necessary.

This is an interesting topic! I also scan the ingredients list and see if I would have to buy anything. If so, it's probably out (unless I've recently been intrigued by other recipes using that thing). I, too pass over most lengthy or complicated recipes, although a really spectacular one might get mentally filed for a special occasion.

But mostly, I am an analytical recipe reader. I can usually tell pretty quickly whether I'm going to like the cookbook, or website, or blog, or whatever. I like almost all ingredients, so for me it's about the author's technique. I am interested in learning exciting ways to prepare simple foods. I don't own many cookbooks, but I prefer to read them from start to finish, like a book, and extract new food combinations or methods. I am put off by pretentious writers, and attracted to authors who are interested in bridging the gap between chefs and home cooks, and who are willing to buck tradition if they find a better way of doing something. When I've made things I've been completely unfamiliar with, pictures have been much appreciated.

I like having pictures but 95% of the time I don't have to have one to try a recipe. However, sometimes, I can't figure out what the recipe is supposed to come out like so if there is no picture I'll skip it.

As a corollary, the look of a cookbook makes a difference to me. I love to leaf through cookbooks so I check them out from the library often. I won't check out a book that doesn't attract me regarding the look of how it's printed. And mostly that means I want to see pictures. But not always.

I don't like books that have dark tan print on light tan paper, for example. I like to see recipes start at the top of the page. In other words, if one recipe is too short to fill a whole page, then have white space. I don't like it when the next recipe starts just under the previous one, thus causing it to continue on the next page. What're they tryin' to do, save paper or sumpin?

Now, that's not to be confused with recipes that naturally take up more than one page. Although, since I'm into simplicity most of the time, that elaborate of a recipe will get skipped as well.

I prefer slick pages to newsprint type pages. And I like the complete recipe all together. I hate it when they say, make the recipe on page 106 then continue here, or See sauce in sauce section and topping in topping section, etc.

And in the end, I'll admit that even when there IS a picture, my final result inevitably looks nothing like it! LOL

But back to recipe criteria (as opposed to cookbook criteria) what Cathy said goes for me too: I scan the list of ingredients, then if the recipe passes the ingredients test, I check the complexity of the directions and balance that with my interest in the ingredients.

And LOL Cathy regarding walking out of restaurants. I've walked out of plenty of them for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that the faucet in the restroom isn't working, Ugh! People who get embarassed by such things are better off not hanging around with me!

I can't decide quite how to answer this. On the one hand I love seeing pictures and they can definitely drive me to try a recipe, but on a square inch basis recipes have to take up a higher percentage of space than the pictures or else I feel like I'm reading a photographer's excuse for a book.

I am drawn in by introductions at least as much as by pictures. Whether it's Cooks Illustrated going through their anal rituals or the author reminiscing about her immigrant grandmother, for me it breathes life into the recipe.

Ina Garten's books, though a touch photo-heavy for my taste, come pretty close to my ideal in their presentation of both written word and photography.

I got a kick out of Lowspark's response. And I can totally relate. I love Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in that it covers basics and encourages (forces?) me to come up with my own creations. On the other hand I don't think I could come up with an uglier format, so I find I really have a really hard time opening it up.

Back to the original question and my first paragraph, cookbooks that are overladen with pictures would quickly become coffee table books in my house if I had a coffee table. Since I don't and I've got limited space on the baker's rack they end up in a box in a closet.

One thing that drives me crazy is when additional ingredients come into play that weren't mentioned in the original ingredient list; OR when the ingredients need to be divided into parts but no mention was made of this next to the ingredient on the list. This seems to be something that is happening more often then in the past. It makes me wonder just who is proof-reading these recipes.

May, If you remember, we led the way in embarrassing our travel partners.

OT-like a couple weeks ago traveling with 3 friends to New England, going through airport security. The security screeners kept going back and forth--one saying I had this the other saying I didn't do that. I didn't know what they were talking about. Finally the guy hollered to the other guy at the conveyor belt that I didn't take my jacket off. Well I didn't have a jacket on. So I pulled off my top and stood there in the security line with just my bra. My travel partners who had been waiting for me quickly left.

Foas- reread your post. Rofl.

Just did, three times. Is it the fact that I said I don't know how to answer it but then gave a rather lengthy answer? If so, I was just "thinking out loud." If I'm missing something else, maybe it's because I'm sick as a dog and my head's a bit foggy.

Cathy,
ROTFL!!

Classic!

I'm definitely an ingredients reader kind of gal. No matter how good the pic looks, I can usually tell if the recipe is gonna be good based on the ingredients used and the cooking technique.

I also think it's a personal style sort of thing too. For example, there are some peeps here on the CF that I've loved every one of their recipes posted, and some others are not my style.

I know that everything I make from Ina Garten's cookbooks are going to be great; however, Paula Deen is hit or miss. Bon Appetit is famous for having overly pretentious recipes where the dish just tastes "meh", but I've made a few that were home runs!

Marcella Hazan is another favorite and her cookbooks don't have pics, but everything I've made of hers is fabulous.

I've also been suckered into a restaurant where their plate presentation for the food was WOW, but the flavor so-so. I think that's why I stay away from "foo-foo" restaruants and I'm more drawn to the ones that have character. I ususually find the most amazing food at the most unusual places.

Oh dear. I hope you feel better soon.

You're right. There is nothing at all funny about the phrase "anal rituals" and it takes a truly immature mind to laugh at such a thing. Ahem.

jessica that cracked me up too!! FOAS I love the way you write!

Cathy...LOL ROTFLMAO

Ingredients, not pictures for me. I love the church cookbooks and they never have pictures. I have a very large collection of cookbooks with and without pictures.

Sue

Good question!
I like the ones that go into great discussion and dissection of particular ingredients and what they're good for and why and how they're used, and then finally get to the recipes. Sometimes, I never get to try many of the actual recipes, but the information inspires me to expand my own cooking repertoire. Some favorite cookbook authors are Patricia Wells and Marcella Hazan.