Cookbook Recs

I feel like I neglect one of my favorite types of books on this blog: cookbooks. I love them, whether I'm reading one simply to stare at the pictures or to actually figure out how to make something. Food writing can be, well, delicious. Even during kitchen-lazy phases in which Easy Mac or speed-dialing for Indian is the most cooking I do, I still spend afternoons reading cookbooks, drooling over the pictures and tabbing the pages of recipes I wanted to make *someday.*

One of the areas in which I'm trying to find balance in 2012 is my eating habits, and so far I have made huge progress. I've greatly improved the ratio of whole foods I eat (especially produce!) to processed stuff, and for the first time in my young-professional life, I am cooking dinner more than ordering takeout. That. Is. Huge. (Don't worry--weekends are still for pizza/nachos. I will never totally give them up. Also doughnuts.)

So I've been dipping into my collection of cookbooks for inspiration and to make sure I don't get sick of making the same meals all the time. My all-time favorite cookbook is this one:

Hey Mom: Your falling-apart-old
edition is a collectible now!

I learned how to bake from this one. I love the retro pictures and nothing beats its recipe for blackberry-cream pie. Of course, on most nights I'm not going to make something from this kitschy classic. Let's face it--mid-century cuisine is pretty heavy on the meat and potatoes, two things I don't eat a ton of nowadays.

More recent finds are:

How hard can a recipe with only
four ingredients be?
(Okay, sometimes surprisingly hard.)

Essential for the TJ's obsessed.
Which I am.

Less a to-make-tonight's-dinner book,
more a drool-over-the-photos book

If it's not a dessert, I still need the
basics to avoid a culinary meltdown.

Give me more inspiration, so I can resist the siren call of takeout! 

What cookbooks are essential in your pantry? Which do you drool over as cookbook candy?

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