Great Recipes & Good Conversation

Well, we’ve just made the first post to our bright, shiny new Central Coast Foodie Facebook page. Visitors and friends are welcome to post comments, questions, and ideas throughout CCFoodie, but this FB page might make possible other types of larger group discussions. Such as, where did you first discover great recipes that inspired you to prepare meals at home?

What was the first cookbook that really encouraged you to try new recipes and improvise? You might have had someone teach you (and we’ll save the question of who taught you to cook for another post) but what was the first book that took you by the hand and led you into the kitchen to develop some skills and confidence?

For me, it was the Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen. Although I’m not a vegetarian, I enjoyed knowing how to cook great recipes exclusively with vegetables, grains, fruits, cheeses and other staples of the basic veggie diet. The hand-lettered recipes in this book, published by Ten Speed Press, made it all approachable and the fact that she worked to use ingredients commonly found in a pretty well-stocked kitchen made it a practical choice for stretching my wings in the kitchen.

What’s your go to book for how to?