What one cookbook would you grab from your burning kitchen?

My hometown church cookbook from the 80s. I use it all the time.

I have a family cook book of my Grannie's recipes and it is interspersed with anecdotes and stories from her children and grandchildren. It is priceless to me. You can tell that we were poor folk because the first three recipes are rabbit, squirrel and coon. Also has recipes for her banana cream pie, chocolate gravy, buttermilk biscuits, bread pudding, fried okra....and the list of southern food just goes on and on!

Can it be a box? The box of recipes written out in my mom's handwriting. Everything else I use is online.

I recently finished a project. My daughter is moving to the US for her senior year of highschool and I'm sending her host mama a copy of a cookbook that came out in 1908 in New Zealand. Every household had one. It's is currently up to edition 69 from 2016. My copy is from 1992. I asked friends and family to share stories and photos of things they cooked and popped them in the appropriate page. Some people sent pics of tatty old cookbooks with their grandmothers (or great grandmothers) handwriting and notes in the margins. It's reminded me to take pics of important pages so at least I'd have a digital copy.



So in answer to your question, I have too many cookbooks to save them all, but I will photograph the important pages of all of them.

My 1967 Joy of cooking and Sunday's at Moosewood.

The binder with all my favorite recipes in it.

My binder that I made of all the recipes I actually use. I put it together about 15 years ago to take on a move where we suitcased in. Ever since I have added any new recipes that I try and the family likes.

Just one?!? In the few moments I've been considering this question, I've changed my mind multiple times. There are too many that are indispensable to me. I write in all my cookbooks -- notes about alterations to recipes and sometimes when it was served ("Thanksgiving 1999," "C's 16th birthday," etc). It's like looking back at diaries in a way! And then there are the cookbooks passed down from my grandmother, my mother, my aunt, his grandmother... almost all of those have their writing in them.

Never mind. I guess the house burned down around me. I'm still here trying to pick just one.

I have a notebook full of my favorite recipes, with more pages of recipes stuffed in the back cover, it's over 26 years old, I keep meaning to get a bigger notebook and rewrite but I like the idea of taking photos of the pages

Most of my favorite recipes are in digital form of some sort but I do have a hospital auxiliary cookbook that one of DH's aunts gave me for a wedding shower gift that I LOVE. It has lots of regional recipes from where DH grew up and many just plain good old recipes that have been handed down for generations.

Truthfully none and it would be a relief because the decision to ditch them would be taken out of my hands. But I probably would save the 1936 Watkins cookbook that was my grandmas and that has a copy of a grocery store order in it (for the record - beans, bread, rolls, and lard for a total of $1.14)

My ancient Better Homes and Gardens cookbook with the red plaid cover that my Dad gave me over 50 years ago. It's held together with a big thick elastic band. The cover has come off and many of the pages are falling out, and there are spots from cooking all over many of the pages, but it is priceless to me.

Can I grab three? They are all small and are located on the same shelf together.

The first is one I chose on vacation in Taos New Mexico when I was about 13. It is a little paperback volume of "authentic Mexican" recipes. Back in the early 1970s Mexican food was not a widely popular option. We had met sopapillas for the first time and I wanted to make some when we got home. I found the little recipe book in a gift shop and bought it as my souvenir from the trip.

The second is a well used community fundraiser (raised money for a new fire truck in town) It was given to me as a wedding gift. I love the names of the people I knew growing up and the reminders of the typical fare I ate as a kid.

The third is an Italian cookbook I bought while living in Italy. It isn't americanized Italian food but from the kitchens of Italian housewives.