1930: introducing My Better Homes & Gardens Cook Book.

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Woody

Woody

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I have always been a Fanny Farmer kind of guy. Mom bought each of us a copy of Fanny Farmer/s cook book and autographed it

when we graduated from High School. None of us were strangers to how to cook, do dished or go shopping. Mon and Dad made sure we all had a t least a little taste of that at home. But once you leave the nest, there was no one right there to tap on the shoulder and ask questions : what temperature for roasting a chicken? How long? What do I put on it or in it?

Fanny was always there with the answers in a bachelor friendly way!
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Everyone always had the Better Homes and Garden book though. This is the one Mom had on here shelf. I never did though, never had a need. Fanny had more than enough to help me with.
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I have the real old cookbooks, too, and also enjoy the table setting portions. When they started to colorize them, I love the jello varieties. I use alot of our family "church" cookbooks. You can tell the difference in the recipes over the years. Cream, for instance, was in the recipe, and it was the kind you got from your milk cow. Not the tub of stuff in the grocery store that has no cream whatsoever in it. So later recipes use the fake stuff and cake mixes from a box.
 
Pearl said:
I have several Betty Crocker and Better Homes and Garden cookbooks from different decades (thanks Mom)! It is neat how they change over the years! I do wish BH&G would have left their Table Setting section in, I always felt everyone should know how to properly set a table!!
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My Mom gifted me a Betty Crocker cookbook when I got married in 1983. Best cookbook ever. But now I get most recipes online.
Pearl said:
I have many family and church cookbooks that I find at garage sales. I even found two home economics class cookbooks from two different area schools. One from the '60's and the other from 1975! I don't think they even offer home ec anymore!?
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I do have some church cookbooks and even a cookbook a bunch of co-workers and I put together after sharing so many pot lucks. So many good recipes in those.
 
I have more cookbooks than I care to admit too. My favorites belonged to my grandmother. In particular is Meta Given’s Encyclopedia of cooking—two volume set, circa 1947. The other ones I enjoy are booklets devoted to one topic; eggs, luncheon, beef, etc. These were part of a premium given at the butcher shop/grocery. i think there are 25 of them left but originally the had close to 80 that had there own binder that held them.
 
I have an older Betty Crocker cookbook, about 50 other cookbooks including some from my great grandmother that are in Italian (those take a hot minute to translate!). My go to is the Americas test kitchen family cookbook that I’ve had for almost 20 years for most quick stuff. I also recently acquired a 1939 New England Yankee cookbook that has all sorts of fun stuff in it.
 
I used to have a lot of cookbooks. I have a large cabinet with glass doors and it was full and overflowing. I went through my cookbooks and looked at the recipes from them that I knew I would be interested in using. One by one, I put my recipes into a recipe blog and got rid of most of my cookbooks. I have Better Homes and Garden, Betty Crocker, a few more older classics, a few Bohemian Czech cookbooks, and a couple other ethnic cookbooks. I probably have around 20 cookbooks now, as opposed to around 100. I do find many recipes online.
 
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