There are a few cooks on here and now that the recipe thread is up and running, and the debate about healthy meals and school dinners, just wondered what cook-books everyone has?

I have Delias How to Cook Book 3, although all her recipes are on-line and I use her web-site loads.

Jamie Oliver - The Naked Chef, Jamie's Dinners

Nigella Lawson - Feast

Annabelle Karmel - Cooking for babies & Toddlers

Cooking for Kids

Simple Pasta

Reader's Digest Perfect Poultry

Cambi Kidz Favourites (kindly given to me by Flip)

Also have 50 of Jamie Oliver's favourite recipes (collected tokens from....Daily Express :bag:

And I have various magazines, calenders with lots of recipes in them.

I use the web quite a bit to get recipes too from various sites, Delia, BBC Food and even the supermarket sites have good recipes.

So what books are on your kitchen shelves or do you just go into the freezer and pop open the mircowave?

I have 4 or 5.....

Jane Grigson - English Cooking
1000 Quick and Easy Healthy Recipies
The Griddling Cookbook - which is one of my faves!
Great British Meals
Then there is a really old one, going back to the 50/60's that Mr Q has had for YEARS that I use when baking cakes!

If I want to cook Indian or Caribbean I tend to ring my friend The Hobbit as she is a fab cook, and she tells me what to do.....she does a mean Coq au Vin too!

I also use Tesco and Sainsburys online for recipie ideas, as well as the good old BBC website....... :wink2:

I love this thread.
I have Jamies book. Great. The Return of the Naked Chef
Rose Elliot and Gail Duffy veg cooking
Greek Cooking
Fairworld Cooking
Tomato recipes (fab book).

I love to cook - you have inspired me to organise a dinner party but I think my first one needs to be haggis, neeps and tatties with a few wee drams

Sounds lovely tonee, what time do you want us round?!! :D

I done Haggis as a starter one time, in filo pastry with redcurrant sauce. It made a nice change.

I love to cook too Tonee and I do love Haggis. Macsweens haggis is delicious, and their vegetarian one is just as yummy!!! :eat:

I have just counted I have 59 books and two boxes of collected card recipes, cut out magazine recipes and computer print outs.

I have an awful lot - but would be pleased with more - I taken them to bed to read as well. I love em.

My fave at the mo is the Prue Leith Cookery Bible - it is a hard back, of over 800 pages, I got it for my birthday and it is just amazing.

I have one cook book.....

it's a Pasta one and I have yet to use it.....

I am much more of an experiment and learn cook and very rarey work from a proper recipe! :book:

Although i am still a cook in training, i do enjoy my little self in the kitchen. The trouble is, the few occasions i have 'tried' to be adventurous something goes horribly wrong, or it tastes revolting and i have spent a small fortune on the ingredients.

I did this with a steak casserole. Easy peasy i thought. It was steak and guiness and all sorts of weird and wonderful things with dumplings on top - and it tasted awful :unsure:

I do still try cooking, and cook 'homemade' things about 4 times a week. The other occasions i crack open a jar of sauce, slam in a pizza or have a fry up (like tonight (although i only have a fry up about once a month)).

I have about 10 cook books, but i cant remember what they are. Some are ones that my parents have bought me. One is from WH Smiths and has 1001 receipes in. I have many M&S books - like 'Pasta made simple' and things like that. I have a Casserole book (which im sure Secrets sent me), and a few others.

I would love to be able to cook, and cook splendid things - but it so often goes wrong, so you loose spirit.

I actually took five of my cook books up to bed with me last night! i was looking for a nice simple chicken receipe, but I couldn't find one that tickled my fancy, so instead we shall be having a good old CCCC (Christine's Chuck-it-in Chicken Casserole) which are always tasty but never come out the same twice .... do we ever live dangerously in our house!

That's the one...Pasta Made Simple!

Bonnie....I avoide cakes and puddings like the plague unless it's pavlova....I do the best raspberry pavlova....any other puddings I attempt go horribly wrong! :blush:

I always cook from scratch when at home since I eat ready meal stuff for two days when I work.....love it...I mix allsorts of things I probably shouldn't and have a fab time doing it.....! :laugh:

I have a few, off the top of my head,

Pasta/Italian dishes

Weight Watchers Set of 4

"Jamies Kitchen" - Jamie Oliver (To be honest it looks great but every meal requires about 100 ingredients and I simply cannot be asked!)

Ainsley Harriot's "Low fat meals in minutes" - Absolutely fantastic cookbook! Wonderful ideas and very very easy!


... just remembered, I also have the cards, and I also sometimes keep the Sainsbury's mag for a bit to get some ideas..



I have more but can't be bothered to walk to the kitchen right now... lazy I know!! :book:

I have loads of cook books including:
almost all of Delia Smith's books;
lots of Nigella Lawson, including the wonderful How to be a Domestic Goddess;
various books on baking cakes and making yummy stuff with chocolate;
a handful of veggie cookbooks; and
various other cookery waifs and strays including a brilliant book on making jam - the lemon curd is particularly divine.

In all I think I have around 20 cookbooks. Can you tell that I like cooking? :D

I had a craving for orange curd the other day, on crusty bread with heaps of unsalted butter.

But I cant find any orange curd anywhere :sad:

Oops sorry, way off topic :bag:

the lemon curd is particularly divine.
:D

Oh could you stick this one on the 'sticky' recipe thread Rothera - and I wonder could you substitute the lemon for orange for Floops's craving??

I have absoutely no intention of making curd - lemon or orange. that's far too seriously like proper cooking.

I shall try Waitrose :)

that's far too seriously like proper cooking.

so is making jelly just pretendy play time stuff?? :kid:

Oh could you stick this one on the 'sticky' recipe thread Rothera - and I wonder could you substitute the lemon for orange for Floops's craving??

Will do. :)

Cook Books!? Oh hell, far too many, if I was to cook a recipe each day from them they would go 200 years I guess! I just love cooking, real food, fresh foods, and trying anything! :wub:

so is making jelly just pretendy play time stuff?? :kid:

yes :bag: ......................

I have a Vegetarian Baby cookbook and a vegetarian cookbook. Can' say I've used either of them yet. I haven't had the baby one for long though which is my excuse :D

(the other one I've had for four years :shocking: )

I have a Vegetarian Baby cookbook and a vegetarian cookbook. Can' say I've used either of them yet. I haven't had the baby one for long though which is my excuse :D

(the other one I've had for four years :shocking: )


Avoid the recipes for Boiled Vegetarian Baby - they all come out rather bland.

Floopy has a good recipe for Baby en Gelee I believe...:laugh:

Mmmm that does sound tempting :D

My poor baby generally suffers concoctions of whatever I have in my kitchen, the other day he had butternut squash mixed with bananas, mushrooms and broccoli. I'm sure he's going to thank his lucky star he got me as a mum!

Does anyone have the Annabel Karmel baby cookbook because I hear that's supposed to be good but I didn't get it in case it was all meat recipes. I wonder if a lot of the recipies have easily subsitutable ingredients :unsure:

Avocado (sp? it doesn't look right does it) and banana is a good mix for baby and sweet potato is a must. I have the Annabel Karmel book, it does have quite a lot of veggie recipes in it too Gelastic. :)

Mmmm that does sound tempting :D

My poor baby generally suffers concoctions of whatever I have in my kitchen, the other day he had butternut squash mixed with bananas, mushrooms and broccoli. I'm sure he's going to thank his lucky star he got me as a mum!

Does anyone have the Annabel Karmel baby cookbook because I hear that's supposed to be good but I didn't get it in case it was all meat recipes. I wonder if a lot of the recipies have easily subsitutable ingredients :unsure:

I have it, but it involves cooking, so I've never used it.

You want it?

I have it, but it involves cooking, so I've never used it.

You want it?

And there was me all shocked because you had posted in this thread Floops, I was getting worried then that you had started cooking!

Does anyone have the Annabel Karmel baby cookbook because I hear that's supposed to be good but I didn't get it in case it was all meat recipes. I wonder if a lot of the recipies have easily subsitutable ingredients :unsure:

Gelastic - it is the baby food bible IMO.

I gave mine away to my sis in law when my tiddlers began eating grown up food, but it was my bible throughout weaning and baby and toddler years.

And no it is not all meat at all - I would say less than 40% is meat, going on memory. Bella has this so she can actually look at it and tell you for definite.

My youngest is not a veggie - but will often shun meat in favour of veg, which is great [I am similar] and I am sure part of this is the diet he was fed initially. I think I kept meat to an absolute minimum in the early months - so Annabel Karmel must have had some fab veg only stuff. I think youngest was weaned on pureed courgette for ever - my green grocer would keep them for me weekly.

And don't you agree squashes are the most under-rated veg going??

Sorry, but I'm going to have to ban this thread till the bookcase comp is over! :w00t: