LUCY BURDETTE: I confess that when I'm making something new, I often search for recipes online at my favorite sites (among them Once Upon a Chef, Feasting at Home, New York Times Cooking) but I also love a good hard copy of a new cookbook. Here are two that I requested (aka bought for myself LOL) for Christmas:
I’ve also been involved with producing two cookbooks this year. Lucy Burdette’s Kitchen, Recipes and Stories from the Key West Food Critic Mysteries, came out as an ebook this summer, but now it’s out as a hardback (large print!)
It’s expensive—sorry!—but really lovely, actually exceeded my expectations. If you have leftover gift certificates or some spare change, a true Key West food critic mystery fanatic might love this.
My second cookbook project was editing the out-of-print editions of the Key West Woman’s Club Cookbook into a new version. It’s wonderful because it retains the charm of the older books, but has some recipes from current members too. I don't know how much I'll cook from it, but I love it for the history. I’ll keep you posted on where this will be sale, very soon!
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| The cookbook team, Aundrea Wagner, Ed Swift, Marlene Thorn, and me |
Do you still use actual paper cookbooks these days? Which are your favorites?
Cookbooks! I love cookbooks! These look amazing, Lucy . . . .
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, I still use actual paper cookbooks . . . that's where some of the best recipes are! I've worn out two or three copies of "The Joy of Cooking" . . . other favorites include "The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines" and "Bobby Flay's Throwdown" . . . .
I've never used the Frugal Gourmet or Bobby Flay, though a friend was raving about him!
DeleteLove cookbooks. I still look up recipes from my kindergarten school fundraiser cookbook, which has several recipes from my mom. And recipes from Margaret Fox’s cafe beaujolais cookbooks. I received the Rachel ray cookbook for Christmas one year from a young relative who loves to cook. Yes, I still have printed cookbooks. At last count, I have 36 cookbooks!!
ReplyDeleteYou go Diana! Love the idea of the kindergarten fundraiser:)
DeleteLucy, I love this cookbook, which was made with Ditto machine, copying the pages and produced by hand! Now it is in a plastic lunch bag for protection! And congratulations on the publication of your cookbook!
DeleteCookbooks are like a treasure trove of history. It is watching cooking evolve, or devolve as the case may be, over the years. I want to know how you like your two new cookbooks. They look intriguing. -- Victoria
ReplyDeleteSo far so good Victoria, I've made a couple things from each
DeleteRoberta, how is the Smitten Kitchen cookbook? What drew you to that one? If I remember correctly, my son used to send me to their recipes for Kosher style foods for holidays.
ReplyDeleteUsing an online cookbook doesn't work well for me. I like paper cookbooks and use them all the time. When I find a recipe online that I want to try, I save it in a file on my computer and print it out if I decide to use it.
I am glad that your cookbook is out in print. I had tried to pre-order it but was unsuccessful.
Yes I like the Smitten Kitchen. You could check out her website and see if it attracts you
DeleteCongratulations on the hardcover for your own book, Lucy! Curious - why do you say you doubt you'll cook from the Key West book?
ReplyDeleteYes to keeping and using the paper cookbooks. Tassajara Bread Book, The New Basics (by the Silver Palate people), two Julia Childs, Mad About Muffins, and Joy of Cooking are my much (and still) used standbys, plus two Madhur Jaffrey Indian cookbooks.
Even when I use an online recipe, I print it out so I can mark up my changes, then I slide it into a folder that lives on one of the cookbook shelves.
The KW recipes are very old-fashioned--turtle soup, pounded conch, etc. For me, it's more the history I love
DeleteI am a huge Smitten Kitchen cookbook fan. I use several of Deb Perlman's recipes from her first cookbook all year long.
ReplyDeleteDEBS got me hooked on Christopher Kimball's Milk Street (show, magazine and online recipes) during the pandemic. I bought the thick cookbook with recipes across the globe from 2017-2022.
I also love this show and look forward to it every Saturday when it airs here in Maine on PBS. I hadn’t thought to check out the cookbook(s)!
DeleteDebs is like our cookbook dealer LOL
DeleteI watch Christopher Kimball's Milk Street show and really enjoy it. But I've never made any of his recipes. I didn't know there was a magazine - I'll check it out.
DeleteCongratulations on your own cookbook, Lucy! I'm curious what it was like putting it together -- how different or similar was it to writing a book?
ReplyDeleteI still use cookbooks -- The Joy of Cooking, Deborah Madison's The Savory Way, Annie Somerville's Fields of Greens (vegetarian), and a couple of Moosewood ones, too. Like other commenters, I also search online, then print out the keepers, mark them up with my own notes, and file them in a 3-ring binder that lives on the counter. I also love watching videos of the recipe coming together.
It was different Amanda--most of the recipes in the LB cookbook had already been printed in the series. I just had to write the notes and add a few. Unfortunately, there isn't any artwork.
DeleteThanks, Lucy. Too bad about the lack of artwork, but I can imagine how that graphic element would add to the production process and costs!
DeleteCongratulations on your beautiful hardcover. I love cookbook art. Yours is cute and cheerful. Love the colors! I will certainly add that to my growing collection. My go-to cookbooks are the Better Homes and Gardens (yes the red and white gingham. My mother gave me a (then) recent version when I moved into my own apartment at 18 years old). I could probably get an even more updated one now. I like the simple and consistent recipes. I also love the America’s Test Kitchen cookbook for trying more sophisticated and adventurous recipes. They are easy to follow and fool-proof. Which is what I need. Lots and lots of detailed steps! I am not a natural cook. But I LOVE baking. I do more bread baking in the winter and use the Bread Bible for that. I do like some of Rachel Ray’s recipes. I especially love her Ragu recipe in her “50” cookbook (which I got for myself when I turned 50).
ReplyDeleteStacia, the BHG cookbook is a treasure! I have one of those too...
DeleteI also use the ATK (America's Test Kitchen) cookbook. I like how they identify & correct common errors in their recipes to make them foolproof.
DeleteThat is the reason I used to buy America's Test Kitchen Or Cooks Kitchen magazines. Their recipes are foolproof!
DeleteI also like Ina Garten's recipes for the same reason - they always turn out well.
I love ATK. Been a fan of the both shows for years. I'm trying to convince myself to purchase the 25th anniversary cookbook. I did download the app. Made the four layer gingerbread cake, has cupcakes, with the ermine frosting for Thanksgiving this year. Delicious
DeleteAmerica's Test Kitchen's recipe for French onion soup is to DIE for. A pain yo make, but absolutely worth every tear.
DeleteAlas, I don't think I am the target audience for these cookbooks. My mind keeps going back to Damon Knight's short story "To Serve Man." notably filmed as an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
ReplyDeletethat was an amazing story! There is a short story at the end of the LB cookbook that includes the poisonous recipe:)
DeleteI love cookbooks! I definitely prefer them to searching for recipes online, but of course I do that too. I like to use family/community cookbooks, where that is the only place to find some recipes. My older edition of Joy is falling apart, but I still prefer it to the newer version I also have. Not that the older one is an antique or that the new one is hot off the press. I have a La Leche League cookbook I sometimes use. I remember it said about one recipe 'how long the cake will keep is unknown." I grew up using the Betty Crocker cookbook and I have been unable to replace the one I had when it fell apart. Luckily I had made copies of some of my favorite recipes.
ReplyDeleteI have several Julia Child cookbooks but they are mostly for reading, since I don't do a lot of fancy cooking any more. But they are still wonderful to just page through and 'hear' her voice.
Judi, I have four versions of the Joy of Cooking, because they are quite different. At one point my husband took to reading one of them because of the food science chapter, which not all of them include.
DeleteI wish I hadn't thrown away my mother's copy of JofC--it was falling apart and the cover had been ripped off by a previous puppy (not Lottie, though she would have done if she could have reached it.) Still, it was a treasure!
DeleteLucy, I also got rid of my mom’s JofC when we moved. I have a more recent version and (foolishly, it appears) thought they were pretty much the same. — Pat S
DeleteOccasionally I will use recipes on line and I also use online for cooking tips. Yesterday I wanted to make pancakes but didn't have eggs, so I learned that you can substitute applesauce as a binder for the egg. And they pancakes tasted great without the egg.
ReplyDeleteI primarily use Better Homes & Garden and Ina Garten cookbooks.
So interesting about the applesauce! Our daughter loves Ina Garten, and I did enjoy her recent memoir.
DeleteLucy, I just finished reading the memoir by Ina Garten. Loved the book.
DeleteMost of my cooking is trying a new recipe, and I admit most comes from various blogs. You have probably been there – see something that looks good from the morning FB feed, look up recipe, and zip, down the rabbit hole you go until long after you discover that you have missed lunch!
ReplyDeleteMy best cookbooks are Fanny Farmer – never did like Joy, and two homemade ones. One is a small cookbook, that a friend and I made for a teach kids nutrition, cooking skills, and fun recipes for 4-H. Nothing included hot dogs or chicken nuggets, but introduced them to rosti from Switzerland (they loved it), hot red cabbage salad (they didn’t), and blueberry grunt. The French kids were so happy to introduce us all to their favourite Pouding Chomeur – everyone loved that! The last book is a flip-legal notebook with Gestetener copied recipes from my grandmother. She sort-of told her carekeeper how she made some of her recipes. Some were pilfered from my mother and other grandmother, and some were hers. Some things were left out of recipes – use shortening she says in recipe for ginger snaps, while she used bacon fat – not the same cookie at all!
I love the sound of your homemade cookbooks Margo!
DeleteLucy, I have the e-version of your cookbook, and am enjoying just reading it, so far!
ReplyDeleteYes, I still use cookbooks, although there are a bunch in my shelves I will never use. Some are just for inspiration--food porn? LOL However, last night I made one of our longtime family favorites, Swiss steak (made with venison), from my own second oldest cookbook. It is hanging together by sheer will, the pages are mostly loose, food-stained, and discolored, and kept intact with a rubber band. It's a paperback that insurance agents used to give newlyweds, which means I've had mine since 1970. But I learned to cook with my dad in the early 1960's, using our family's copy of the same one.
The older cookbook I have is what Margo describes, a Gestetner-copied collection of recipes bound in cheery blue and white checked oilcloth. I love fundraiser cookbooks like this, and like the Key West one you edited, Lucy. The stories are often quite charming. Like the recipe in one that raised money for a local public garden: Aunt Jessie's 10-Vegetable Soup. The recipe is so old that the original began "Take a bucket of cold spring water".
I love these stories Karen! The best parts of the KW cookbook are introductions from the club members at the time about local recipes and history--priceless!
DeleteLoving all these cookbook memories! The go-to cookbook in our household is The Settlement Cookbook, since my mother was from the Midwest.
ReplyDeleteGreat basics and surprising European standards - after all, it was put together with recipes from a "settlement house " of immigrants over 100 years ago.
I've heard of that one, but never seen it or cooked from it.
DeleteWow, that hard cover cookbook is amazing! It’s gorgeous! What an absolute treasurer. Wow. As for me, I love paper cookbooks, and even when I get them online, I print them out, because it’s so hard to cook with a computer or a laptop or a phone. I always look up several recipes for the same thing, and compare and recalculate, and then make it my own way. I’m really just looking up the process, I guess, and secret ingredients.
ReplyDeleteBut I love my Mark Bittman, and joy of cooking, and the New York Times cookbook. Oh, and the blue strawberry cookbook. Because they all tell how to cook something and WHY it works, more than just give static recipes.
I have to say, Lucy/Roberta , your life has turned out to be a much different than it was when we first met so many years ago! Pretty fascinating! Xxxxxx
You're not kidding Hank! Life's a journey isn't it??
DeleteI feel woefully out of sync with the community on this one. I still use several old favorite cookbooks for specific recipes, but I have converted to almost 100% use of the internet to find new recipes. It was just so rare that I would find more than one or two recipes in any given book that I would want to use. When we downsized this year, I gave away 30 or more cookbooks.
ReplyDeleteI use kind of an old school/new school hybrid for organization. If I use an online recipe and want to keep it for future use, I usually print a copy of it. And during covid, I made myself a master list of every main dish recipe I had made and decided was definitely good to go into regular rotation, along with where the recipe can be found again. I continue to add recipes to that list, and it is currently at 77.
Wow, I need you to come and get me organized!!
DeleteI honestly don’t cook that much. I will go to the few church cookbooks or my old Better Homes and Gardens red plaid cookbook for ideas from time to time. And I also do internet searches. I like Pioneer Woman.
ReplyDeleteFun fact: when the kids were young we would all go for haircuts and the lady who cut our hair would turn a small tv on cartoons or something for them and they would ask her to put it on the Food Channel.
I love that Brenda! Do your kids cook these days?
DeleteTwo of the 3 do so far. Youngest still in bachelor mode.
DeleteI still use paper cookbooks though I have thinned the herd quite a bit. I also use recipes from magazines and those written on index cards. Although I have some standard cookbooks, most of my favorite recipes are from compilation cookbooks and fundraisers. A couple from New Orleans, some from Texas, a couple from Minnesota (hot dish!) and so forth.
ReplyDeleteI have an old one from New Orleans that has the best oyster stuffing in it!
DeleteI use paper cookbooks, too, and like Pat I've "thinned the herd" - still use the Moosewood cookbook and of course Joy of Cooking. Marcella Hazan's Italian Cookbook (just made her wonderful minestrone over the holidays). Online NYTimes Cooking is my go-to recipe source. And I have folders full of recipes I've printed over the years... including Lucy's fabulous granola which I make regularly.
ReplyDeletethanks Hallie. The trouble with this post is it's making me want to buy more. Like Marcella Hazen...sigh...
DeleteI have an entire collection of Moosewood cookbooks!
DeleteLove cookbooks. My favorites are my old tried and true Better Homes and Gardens and one written by a dear friend who originally created it to pass family recipes down to her children and grands. She ended up binding it with tons of family pictures and history. I also have a bunch of "best of" cookbooks compiled by various groups as fundraisers. I always find a treasure in them. That said, I most often find a recipe on the internet and when I try it, I print it out to make notes on, so now have a bulging file full of those. I have also found a few in cozy mysteries I read that have made their way into my rotation.
ReplyDeleteYour friend's book sounds like a real treasure!
DeleteI love recipes in print. I have many cookbooks. My favorite is a Good Housekeeping with a special section created for the rations that happened during WW2. My copy is from an estate sale, my sister has the copy we grew up with. I think it automatically opens to the pancake recipe Mom always used, with bacon grease and batter stains. My most precious cookbook is from my grandmother. She must have received it at a bridal shower. It's signed my the ladies who attended, including both of great-grandmothers.
ReplyDeleteOMG your grandmother's shower recipe book, amazing!
DeleteSince I had finally run out of my grandmother's mincemeat (after 25 years - yes you read that correctly), I thought it was time to make my own. I found her recipe in the above mentioned cook book, and chatted with someone to whom we sold eggs, and who hunted, and obtained some deer meat for the mincemeat. I made it up and stirred it, and did that was necessary.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, my new to the family cousin-in-law (aged 65) said they had a mincemeat party where all her family gets together to make the old family recipe (can you spell booze-up). When I told her I had just finished mine (gran's) and told her that I managed to get some deer meat for it, she said they had moose in theirs. A lot of blah, blahing, and then I looked up Gran's recipe - taken from an old cookbook that was given out with a mix-maxer machine with a meat grinder. Surprise - hers was from the same old cook book!
Don't send me any mincemeat Margo LOL!
DeleteLucy, the best steak I ever had in my entire life was calf moose from a friend who hunted in the Northwest Territory.
DeleteToday, knowing how scarce moose are, I would refuse, but that was almost 50 years ago.
Love the “booze-up” comment, Margo!
ReplyDeleteI have been culling my cookbook herd over the past 4-5 years. Donated all of my Frugal Gourmet books to the local library, etc. I do get 90% of my recipes online (NYT Cooking, All Recipes, et al), but I still have at least a dozen hard and soft cover “book books”. I also still have the newspaper-clipped recipes I used back in my single lady days of the 80s in a little binder thingie that was designed to tuck your paper recipes into. One of my goals for ’25 is to scan all of them and then print and assemble them into a binder cookbook. — Pat S
I love paper cookbooks and use them all the time. I often buy just for the stories and photos. I do check out the Mystery Writer’s cookbook blog, and sometimes I look online but I prefer cookbooks themselves. Lucy, do let us know when the Key West Cookbook is available! I’ll buy a copy for sure!
ReplyDeleteLucy - Your new cookbook was delivered to my home on December 24th! I can't wait to dig into it. My collection of cookbooks is extensive. I collect "local" cookbooks when we travel to learn about local customs and cultures. My kitchen reading nook has a bookcase of just cookbooks that I often pull out just to compare a recipe that I am considering. I am organized by country, by author and by recipe type (like seafood/fish). My go to books are The Joy of Cooking and Alton Brown. Yet, I look forward to every issue of Cook's Illustrated for all sorts of new techniques, food trends and recipes! Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteI think your Key Wet Food Critic Mysteries cookbook is a brilliant idea, Lucy. Gathering the recipes in one handy cookbook lets readers who love it when Hayley fixes something or there's a recipe for any delicious dish in one of the books have a book they can keep in the kitchen. And, they don't have to try and remember what book a certain recipe was in. I also love the Key West Woman's Club Cookbook that you edited. With the edit and even some new recipes, it should be a hit, too.
ReplyDeleteEven though I don't cook much these days, I have to admit that I often look something up online or come across something online that sounds good. However, my favorite cookbooks are one that I got as part of a wedding gift 48 years ago and its companion cookbook. Both are from Pleasant Hill, the Shaker village near Danville. They are We Make You Kindly Welcome: Recipes from the Trustees House Daily Fare and Welcome Back to Pleasant Hill: More Recipes from the Trustees House. Both contain recipes that I grew up on in Kentucky, such as corn pudding and scalloped oysters. There's the famous Shaker lemon pie and lots of other desserts. You get recipes for all you need to fix a full meal, from vegetables to meat and poultry to desserts. It's rather a regional cookbook, but with all you need for a delicious meal.
Your cookbook looks delicious, and as for the Key West Woman's Club Cookbook - outstanding. I just tried to find my old one - must be 20 years old now - it's not with my cookbooks, but I know I have it someplace. Most of my recipes are old friends. I took the time to copy them into the AccuChef program back in the 1990s - the program is long gone, but I printed the cookbook before I moved in 2005 and refer to it often. I also search online - NYT being the first resource - for those times when I feel like something but can't decide how to make it.
ReplyDeleteIs that Ed Swift from Swift's Camera and the Conch Train? My heavens - if it is, he looks the same as he did in the 1970s - well, the hair is a bit different, but the face, the same.
Love your cookbook, Lucy!!! I've retired from cooking (minus the occasional baking) but weirdly I love to read cookbooks. My favorite of all time in the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook. It has an embossed cover - swoon - and the layout and photos are just beautifully done. I prefer print cookbooks - so much easier to use!
ReplyDeleteLucy, your cookbooks are fabulous!! Love the cover of Lucy Burdette's kitchen, so perfect. And I want to know what you think of the bean cookbook. I'm ashamed to admit that I have too many cookbooks that I never cook from, but there are some that are well-loved and used. I have two editions of JofC but the only time I ever cook from them is when I need to know HOW to do something, so useful for technique. I made blackeyed pea soup on New Year's Day from one of the books I do cook from, The Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread Book. On the rare occasions I bake, I still use my Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, too. I have a handful of Jamie Oliver books, but the one that is so used that it's falling apart is Jamie Oliver's Revolution, the book he wrote for people who had never cooked. I might not fit into that category but the recipes are fun and easy to get on the table for dinner. I do not have an Ina Garten book, although I use her online recipes all the time.
ReplyDeleteThese days I most often cook from New York Times Cooking. I love that I can save recipes in the app, and I love the readers' comments--I've had so many good ideas and modifications from those.
But I LOVE reading cookbooks. I just read the Stanley Tucci's The Tucci Table (which my daughter gave me for Christmas) from cover to cover. Now I just have to decide what to cook from it.
Yes, I still use real cookbooks, not as many as I did at one time but still. I got in touch with a niece of a friend who is an avid cook and she came and took a pile (a bankers box and more) orf cookbooks .. I wad thrilled to know that she reads them at night as we might read mysteries to go to sleep. She is a fabulous cook but with a full time job only reads sometimes. I have kept the cookbooks that I need and like your Key West Women Cookbook, I have kept some Junior League cookbooks because they have been really vetted ones you ignore the ones that call for soups added: onion, tomato,,onion, celery, and and soups in the pantheon of of Southern cooking. Several of them are surprisingly wonderful
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Your cookbook looks amazing, Lucy. I love looking at cookbooks, browsing recipes, drooling over some. But I mostly find what I need online these days. And I try to cook as little as possible!
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