Even though my mom taught me to cook, my first real cookbook was the old Better Homes and Garden Cookbook. While my mom's cooking was always "a little of this and a little of that", BH&G taught me how to measure accurately and follow recipes. How do cook a roast and a turkey. My husband and I were watching a show last night, and we saw the back of an old BH&G cookbook, you know the red and white checks, and we both yelled out "cookbook" before they turned it over. It seems this little book was a mainstay in every woman's kitchen!
That one's still in publication, I believe. We have an old one around but I'm pretty sure they still publish new ones.
That's the cookbook my mother had. I have a paperback version. My wife has an old Betty Crocker cookbook from about the same time.
Sometimes you can find those older cook books at the thrift store, although rarely is it one from the fifties or earlier. Some of the older ones are worth quite a bit, and even the newer editions can be sold on ebay at a profit over the thrift store price. I have one that was sold by our church as a fundraiser back in the mid 1980's; and that is the one that I use most often. Of course, since I hate to cook (in any case); I usually make something simple and do not use a cookbook except on rare occasions when I want to make something that i don't know how to cook.
I had one of thos red and white cookbooks. I like to collect cookbooks for the pictures. I don't cook fancy food, I just enjoy the pictures.
I still have mine but it's a bit worse for wear. You can tell my favorite recipes by the stained pages and the back cover has a spiral burn on it where it was set down on a hot burner. It's also stuffed with recipes clipped from magazines and newspapers that I was going to "someday" try (but never did).
When your cookbook looks like that it's a good thing as Martha Stewart would say because it's well used.I wish we could get her items here but they're all at Maceys.