For Lauren - Cookbooks

So here's the truth. I use my sweet cookbooks much much more than my savory cookbooks. Finding 5 to suggest for actual meals rather than meals composed of desserts was difficult. But here are four I use on a regular basis:

The Savory Way by Deborah Madison
My mom found this at DI years ago and it sat on her shelf. She gave it to me 2 years ago and it sat on my shelf. Now I use it all of the time.

Jamie's Italy by Jamie Oliver
I have 5 or so of his cookbooks but I use this one the most. His pesto recipe is perfect and we've eaten pesto pasta for 4 days in a row (because my CSA included a huge bouquet of basil last week) which is amazing considering Bryant has never liked pesto. But he loves this recipe.

Farm to Fork by Emeril Lagasse
I love his recipes. I love the ideas I get from seeing the different flavors he combines.

Sarabeth's Bakery by Sarabeth Levine
Yes, this is a dessert book. But is a recent discovery that I wish I had found years ago because she explains tricks and techniques so perfectly.

I use www.tastespotting.com the most for finding recipes. Especially now that I have a weekly CSA subscription. A few weeks ago I had 2 heads of napa cabbage that I didn't no what to do with so I just went to the website, typed napa cabbage into the search engine, and found a bunch of recipes to look through that I eventually narrowed down to two that we used later in the week.

When we lived in Nebraska and I had nothing to do and free cable I watched the Food Network a lot. And that was a great help because it exposed me to new food ideas and combinations and ingredients I hadn't heard of before. I am finally to the point where I am comfortable making up my own dishes, and I do a lot, but these are the resources I depend on.

I pick up my CSA on Wednesday and payday is Friday so the menu planning/budgeting post is to come. In the meantime here is the perfect pizza.