I just got a stack of cookbooks.  And I've decided not to let them be dust collectors.  So I've decided every other thursday to Hnave a "guinea pig dinner."  So any of my friends feeling adventerous can join me for a dinner featuring a new recipe.

Last thursday it was a pork roast with veggies and it was stupendous.  Juicies pork I've ever eated.  I plan to make it as often as my waistline can handle.  I hope I'm always so successful.

If anyone is interested in joining in I'll list the cookbook and page number of the recipe I'm trying.  If you would like to host your own guinea pig dinners please tell me all about it.

What cookbooks did you get?  I have so many, I might have one you are cooking from. 

See the other thread about Best Recipes, Stephanie is getting us started with that cookbook again and I am looking forward to it.

I am looking forward to the other thread as well.  It will dove tail with what I am doing here very well.  I plan to start with the recipes on page 14 and page 21.  I'll already posted over there.  These are the current cookbooks I have.  I can already recommend anything in the "Crockery Cookery, Revised Edition."  The recipes are wonderful.  I haven't run into a bad one yet and they are easy.

The "How to Cook Everything," ccokbook has recipes that are hard to find other places but I never expect a top quality result from his recipes.  I don't believe this guy can cook.  I know he's famous but his taste buds and mine just don't match up well.

America's Test Kitchen Cookbook, The
Amy Vanderbilt's Everyday Etiquette
Beans: The Bold and Beautiful Book of Bean Recipes
Best American Recipes 2000, The
Best Recipes from the backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Jars
Better Homes and Gardens Casserole Cook Book
Book of Great Desserts
Celebrate With Chocolate
The Connoisseur's Cookbook
Cooking Magic Step-by-Step Cookbooks
Cooks & Books: Recipes from a Well-Read Community
The Complete Book of Food Counts
Crockery Cookery, Revised Edition
The Culinary Arts Institute Cookbook
Decorating Cakes and Party Foods Baking Too!
Deseret Recipes
Diabetes Breakthroughs 2007
Diabetic Cooking for 1 or 2
The Eastern Junior League Cookbook
An Encyclopedia of Chinese Food and Cooking
Escoffier Cook Book and guide to the fine art of cookery
Extreme Entertaining Made Simple
Family Book of Home Entertaining, The
The First Ladies Cook Book
Food Network Magazine Vol 5 Number 8
Fruits: The Good Cook/Techniques & recipes
Fondue, Chaping Dish, and Casserole Cookery
Garnishing: A Feast for Your Eyes
How to Cook Everything
Joy of Cooking
Julia's Kitchen Wisdom: Essential Techniques and Recipes from a lifetime of cooking
Menu-Cookbook for Entertaining, The
Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader
New York Times Cookbook, The; Revised Edition
Night Before Cookbook, The
One Step Prep
Pasta: The Good Cook/Techniques & Recipes Series
Pillsbury Back-off 45th Contest:  100 Winning Recipes
Poultry: The Good Cook/Techniques & Recipes Series

Relaxed Kitchen, The

Tender Loving Cooking
Thoughts for Festive Foods
Treasury of Classic Recipes for Soups and Salads, A

Vegetables: The Good Cook/Techniques and Recipes Series
You Can Do Anything With Crepes

Wowsers!  I recognize a bunch of those titles as older books I gave away.  Couple of those I don't have look interesting and I'll be looking them up for possible inclusion in the collection.  But there are a few I still have -

Best Recipes from the backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Jars

Escoffier Cook Book and guide to the fine art of cookery

Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader

Oh, I have a Crockery Cooking cookbook too, is yours by Mabel Hoffman?  I have this one - http://www.paperbackswap.com/Mable-Hoffmans-Complete-Mable-Hoffman/book/1557883491/   I'd love to cook from it when the weather gets a little cooler. 

Have you used any recipes from the Mitford Cookbook?  Going to get mine out today and look at it.

Yes my Crockery Cooking is by Mabel Hoffman.  If you haven't tried her recipes yet you are in for a treat.  Her Congressional Bean Soup (Navy Bean to me) is wonderful.  I love it during the cold weather.  I've never went wrong with one of her recipes.  I'm very tempted by her Tavern Soup.  I haven't made it yet but it's on my cooking "bucket list."

I haven't made anything from the Mitford Cookbook, but I am saving my chicken bones for the soup.  That is such a great idea.  That book is such a good read.  I guess I haven't put that book on the cook from shelf because I didn't care for the recipes in, "the cat who...series."  It kind of turned me off of the idea of recipes from those types of sources. 

How do you feel about the Escoffier Cook Book and guide to the fine art of cookery?  I was challenged by his intro where he says the book isn't for the amateur cook.  That just got my dander up.  I plan to read through it and see if it is really that elevated.

Escoffier is such an historic figure in the professional cooking world that I had to have the book.  I have read a lot of it, but not the whole thing.  It isn't the easiest read due to the translation from the original French.  I don't have an introduction in my copy, but I would have to agree.  The average home cook isn't going to do the work he wants you to do, make stock for days on end out of various things to perfect the process, and other lessons.  Remember, this is a textbook for French chefs, so it isn't for the faint of heart.  Having said that, there is a lot of good stuff there that you and I can do and enjoy.

I have that Cat Who series ready to go to the library sale, cannot get rid of it here.  I didn't think there were recipes in those books, and I can't find any.  Are you sure it wasn't another series like Sneaky Pie Brown?  There are some great recipes in Diane Mott Davidsons Culinary mysteries, and Cleo Coyles coffeehouse mysteries.  I have made some of those, and haven't run across a bad one yet in those series.

Will get out Mitford and take a look.

I didn't make myself clear.  A couple of fans got together and wrote a cookbook with recipes that are mentioned in the cat who series.  Ms. Braun never put the entire recipe in her books but she mentions many dishes.  The authors used that as a take off point for their cookbook.  But the recipes they published just didn't interest me.

It could have just been the mood I was in at the time.

Escoffier is definitely interesting me.  It seems that when I watch chopped the french trained chefs really out cook the others and I'd really like to know why.  And if I improve my cooking all the better.

I probably shouldn't say this but I like in a culinary backwater so the only person who would enjoy an improvement in my cooking would be me.

So far I've had exactly one missionary over for dinner who was enthusiastic about my menu and he was of course a baker by trade.

Ah, makes sense now, about the cookbook of fan recipes.

You know, it is much the same here.  The only person I cook for is my husband, and he is largely clueless, but he does recognize effort and attempts to make something different.  I am known by my friends as a foodie, so nobody wants to have me over for dinner.  We do go out from time to time, and there are some really good restaurants here.  But, like you, improvements to my skills would only be to make me happy.  Nothing wrong with that!

However, I still cannot chop onions or vegetables the way the pro's do it.  Ever see one go at it really fast?  I just cannot do that.

I used to be able to do it when I bit my nails.  Now my fingernails are to long and the snag in the veggies.  The trick is that the knife is actuall sliding down the knuckle and the finger is tucked in so I don't get cut.  But the technique is for slicing the veggies into the same size pieces not neccessarily about speed.  That of course comes with time.

There are pot lucks at church here but no formal sitdown dinners.   I will occassionally invite the missionaries over or some member or a group I belong to but it's so much work that I don't do it often.  Mostly if I get in the mood to cook I make something I can take to a meeting and serve while we are working.  Of course they are all warned that I only get in the cooking mood about every 4 to 7 years.  They laugh at me when I say things like that.

About using knives in the kitchen . . . . .  after my SOB (Sweet Old Boy) retired, he took up doing some cooking.  But he does it his own way, and sometimes it's kinda peculiar, because in his working years he was a scientist in a laboratory.  So one of the kids found a great Father's Day gift this year---it's a cutting board designed for "The Obsessive Chef".  It's marked with cross-hatching in both English and metric measure, and angles with varying numbers of degrees, so one could, for instance, figure out how to cut an eight-inch diameter pie into five EQUAL pieces.   Now, if he would only stop using the big French chef's knife from my set of Cutco knives for EVERYTHING!    (Correction:  Well, almost Everything----He will use the littlest knife in the set, the stubby paring knife, when the big knife is simply too unwieldy.)

I love it.  What a great gift.  I'd like to have one myself.  That's a great idea.

I use paring knives for just about everything, I have about 12 of them. They work for me. I have a chef's knife, only use it to split watermelon and cantaloupe in half, lol.

I like using my big chefs knife too, I just cut slower than the pros.  I have three paring knives I use for a lot of cutting.  My favorite knife is inbetween, larger than a paring knife but smaller than the full chef's version, and wickely sharp. 

I like the idea of that cutting board too, found that Obsessive one here.  Pretty affordable.  I have two cutting boards I use most, one is pretty small, great for doing just one onion or tomato, and a big one that I get out when I have a lot of things to chop. 

I've found that the bread knife does well for cutting those logs of hamburger into patty sized slices.  And of course I use it for the breads.

I love the chefs knife for chopping.

The paring knife for practicing tomato flowers and making stuff our of my garnish book

The Potato Peeler for making butter flowers with paparika edges.

The Butcher knife for those whole chickens

And the cleaver for pepper steak when I don't cheat and use stew meat.

The Potato Peeler for making butter flowers with paparika edges.

Oh, do tell!  Sounds like a fun thing for a nice dinner party.

Freeze the butter not not to rock hardness.  Along the long edge of the stick slowly and carefully saw back and forth with the potato peeler until you have a piece the length of the stick.  roll it loosely from one end until it forms a flower shape.  The dip the "petals" in a shallow bowl of paparika.  They are really cute.  If you want a fuller flower just peel another layer of the butter and continue to mold it around the base of the flower.

I have the," Garnishing:  A Feast for Your Eyes," and I love it.  I just wish I had better hand and eye coordination.

The nice thing about the butter is that I can just keep practicing until I get it right.

Sounds easy enough!  Will try it.

Good Luck.