Cookbooks

Who knew that cookbooks could be so entertaining to read? Since we moved, we don't eat out as often so I started looking through my cookbooks and Taste of Home magazine to find some new things to try. This week I've been reading through them constantly! The other night I found a recipe for homemade tortilla soup that was really good (I found it in the Better Homes & Gardens book, you know the red and white checkerboard one?). Today I started in on the actual Taste of Home cookbook - everything looks amazing, I'm just not sure my culinary skills are quite up to snuff for some of it yet. Anyway, that's what I've been reading a lot of this week. Here are some of my favorite cookbooks, enjoy :)

I just love this one, called Cheap, Fast, Good!, by Beverly Mills & Alicia Ross. It's all very budget friendly and meals you can make in under 30 minutes. Our personal favorites are the sausage pepper pasta, loaded baked potato soup, and the thrifty chicken with broccoli skillet, mmm......

I'm also a big fan of the Better Homes and Gardens one, especially for baking. This is where I learned to make fruit pies that so far everyone has loved! Honestly, what housewife doesn't have this cookbook in her kitchen? If you don't, you should. We actually got two of these for our wedding, and I hadn't even registered for it. Apparently people know their stuff... :) It's a great place to start - I love that it has a glossary of terms and all kinds of information that other cookbooks might just assume you know. Definitely a good teaching tool.

I like the Taste of Home Cookbook, but things in it are slightly more advanced/fancy than I normally get with my cooking. I think a lot of the stuff is meant more for entertaining than every day stuff, but there are still some yummy looking recipes in it. I haven't made much out of it yet, simply because I haven't had the time to really peruse through it, but that's actually what I'm doing now (It's currently sitting open on the couch next to me and is what inspired this post!). One big plus with this cookbook? It came with a free year's subscription to Taste of Home magazine! I love the magazine version, I've found a lot of good things in it and I always look forward to getting it in the mail. I liked it enough that I even started paying for it - I'm currently on my 3rd subscription, and it's really reasonably priced. Generally around $10.00 for the year I think.

Another Taste of Home publication, the Simple & Delicious cookbook is pretty similar to the Cheap, Fast, Good one that I posted above. It has a lot of great simple recipes in it that are nice for a quick meal, and it also has some really yummy fast deserts in it :) Our favorite thing that I've made out of this one so far is the spicy hamburgers - we don't even make regular burgers anymore, we like them so much, and our friends seem to like them pretty well too!

So those are my favorite cookbooks - I've actually been having a lot of fun trying out new recipes since we moved. Before we moved I never seemed to have the time or energy to branch out much, but now that I'm subbing and home a lot more often I figured why not? My husband and I were just talking that over the summer we want to make goal to see how many new things we can learn to make before school starts. We'll see if it happens, but it could be a fun summer project for us to do together since we'll both be home. He likes to cook too, so hopefully we don't gain too much weight! Lol! What are your favorite cookbooks?