Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Whenever we need a new recipe, we browse there.

Dig out some of the oldies....James Beard on Bread....of course any julia Child....and I opened the Frugal Gourmet the other day....

The old Better Homes & Gardens one is a classic and should be in every kitchen!

Yeah, Ricky, but it's not exactly inspiring...

I have both Plenty and Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi (gifts). They're coffee table books, so easier to copy out what one wants to use in the kitchen but definitely inspiring. Gorgeous, and just reading the recipes makes me hungry. I would love to cook my way through both. (The only thing stopping me from doing so is other cooking commitments...)

A much smaller and more unassuming (though still lovely) one is Classic Spanish Cooking by Elizabeth Luard. Every recipe I've tried is a winner, and they all read well.

Our very favorite book, one we've had almost 40 years, is Simone Beck's Simca's Cuisine, a menu-based book with such names as "A Sunday Night Dinner for 6, to Empty the Icebox". "A Lunch for 4, Dreaming of the South Seas". "A Winter Lunch by the Hearth for 6".

I started a cookbook book club here three years ago. Our first meeting, we all brought appetizers and the book it came from. We then signed up to host each month and developed our rules after a couple of trials and errors as far as main dish was concerned.

The rules are simple:

The hostess selects the "theme" (theme being used loosely as it CAN be theme (like Italian), or it can be a particular chef (like Lidia) or it can be a region (like Sicilian). The hostess also provides the entree and on a rotating basis we all bring one item: appetizer, salad, starch, vegetable, bread and dessert. We have enough members that except for starch and bread, we have two of everything else so whatever the hostess was supposed to bring we just skip that. We have decided to limit membership to 10 because of space when hosting. We've done lots of interesting meals -- the last one being "Any Mediterranean Country but Greece" and this month's will be Backyard BBQ. We have cooked from one cookbook but our goal is NOT to make members buy a book so instead of one cookbook (like Cooking for Jeffrey by Ina Garden) we tend to just say "Barefoot Contessa" because you can find recipes on line.

The one thing that we try to do is not to bring anything "tried and true" -- I've cooked a lot from Barefoot Contessa but if she were our theme, I would pick out a recipe that I've never made before!

Here are some of my favorites:

The Soul of a New Cuisine by Marcus Samuelsson (African)

Greek Cooking in an American Kitchen by St. Demetrios Church Cookbook Committee

Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop (Sichuan)

Fonda San Miguel by Tom Gilliland & Miguel Ravago (Mexican, Tex-Mex)

Japanese Farm Food by Nancy Singleton Hachisu

Morimoto, The New Art of Japanese Cooking by Masaharu Morimoto

I also have a collection of Cajun cookbooks, and that is a style that I make very often. I have several other Japanese cookbooks as well, but those two are my favorites, and I have another Sichuan cookbook.

For great, every day cooking, I love the Hairy biker's chicken and egg book. Great chicken dishes from round the world. Schwarma from Israel, rissoles.....The TV series is very funny too if they show them in your neck of the woods.

I only have a couple hundred cookbooks. What I like depends on my mood, from Farm Journal to Fine Cooking, you never know!

I got used copies of The Frugal Gourmet from RobinKate a long time ago in a swap we had here, and I enjoy them very much. I always enjoy Alton Brown, in written or video form, and rely on Cook's Illustrated for a couple of "favorites".

My all time favorite, though, is "Fork in the Road", by Eric Villegas. He's a Michigan chef, had his own show on PBS called "Fork in the Road", worked for Taste of Home, owned Michigan Venison, a local company that sold venison, ran a restaurant, specialized in local ingredients and food. He's just entertaining.

Another favorite is Ellie Krieger's "Comfort Food Fix". She makes some of my comfort foods actually not so bad for me, LOL. I met her at a food and wine show in Grand Rapids, she's married to a Michigan guy and her book has some very "normal" food, to me at least.

Annie