The First Annual Christmas Cookbook Contest Page One

To see some of the great entries received in the contest, scroll down to your heart's delight. There are more entries on Page Two.

Comments

[Noah Brunn]

My favorite cookbook is the "Fanny Farmer" cookbook. I grew up watching my mother cook large meals for our family or for work crews, sweets for our many visitors, and much more. Invaritably, the she'd have an old book opened on the counter. Its cover long gone, and all binding retired over the hears. A peice of brown leather covered its yellowed loose pages, and as a child I always thought it was magic.
It wasn't until I grew up that i found out its name, and now that I entertain my own guests, im proud to have my own copy.
Now, more then ever, I think there is a bit of magic in that book.

[sally brett]

My favorite cookbook is "The River Cafe Cook Book" by Rose Grey and Ruth Rogers. My sister In-law gave it to me for my Birthday one year and i haven't put it down since. its all about seasonality,simplicity Tuscan food at its best. I have made just about every recipe in this book and it has never let me down. I have cooked for family and friends and the raves just keep comming. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone who loves food and family and entertaining. Getting them all involved in the meal preparation and eating and eating and enjoying everyones company. Fantastico!!!

[judy chrysler]

Greetings from Lakelse Lake, BC.

I would like to nominate my favourite cookbook as "Mamma Never Cooked Like This" by Susan Mendelson. I bought it December 6, 1980 and used it for our group Christmas dinner in our Kitsilano shared house. Five of us lived behind Olympic pizza in an old house.
As I recollect between courses, the five of us and our several guests danced to Talking Heads.
Today,my tattered and splattered copy remains a family favourite. I wooed my husband with several of the recipes in the years following.

[Griff]

Good Afternoon Don;
"Mrs. Beeton's ALL ABOUT COOKERY" is my favourite cookbook. The first reason is that is a hand-me-down from a favourite old aunt, Aunt Grace. Secondly, this history of cookery in the format of a generous dictionary with its dedication, "Art of all arts, that aims to 'cure the ills that flesh is heir to' and save doctor's bills." keeps one's spirits singing as one labours on. Last but not least are the detail procedures for the recipes, challenged only by occasional difficulty measures such as " 4 blades of pounded mace".
Aunt Grace would delight to know her generosity continues to inspires the pleasures of cookery.
Season Greetings!

[Rae Sutcliffe]

My favorite cookbook of all time is: 'JOY OF COOKING", IRMA ROMBAUER.
Why? MY HUSBAND AND I HAVE MADE TWO LONG OFFSHORE VOYAGES IN OUR SAILBOAT, THE FIRST, 4 YEARS LONG, AND THE SECOND, 5 YEARS. NOT HAVING A LOT OF ROOM ABOARD, I TOOK ONLY "JOY OF COOKING" WITH ME. IRMA NEVER LET ME DOWN, NO MATTER WHAT EXOTIC AND UNFAMILIAR, WEIRD VEGIE OR FRUIT OR FOOD I FOUND IN THE LOCAL MARKETS ROUND THE WORLD, I COULD ALWAY TURN TO "JOY" and find out what to do with my strange find!! Hats off to "Joy of Cooking"! On a more mundane day to day level, if anything puzzles me in my more glamourous books filled with lovely pictures, I can alway turn to "Joy" and find my answewrs. Rae Sutcliffe

[gisele coffey]

I have a whole bookshelf of wonderful cookbooks, bought in all corners of the world. But, I must admit, although most of them are covered with stains of a variety of ingredients and "dog-eared", I still love to make things up as I go and experiment with flavours, colours and textures. My use of a good "basics" cookbook has been most important. The one I use is called "Canadian Cook Book" by Nellie Lyle Pattinson; Published by Ryerson Press in 1961.
It's one of those books that has all the recipes my mom used to use. I also have a special fondness of this book as it was awarded to me as the "Foods 11 Home Economics most promising cook". Don't know how promising I am, but I still love to cook and continue to collect cook books.
Cheers, Gisele (Victoria, B.C.)

[Anne Sullivan]

I really like your cookbook suggestions. My very
favourite cookbook of all time is called, "Baking Bread, Old and New Traditions", by Beth Hensperger and Photography by Joyce Oudkerk Pool. This is simply the most wonderful bread book especially for anyone starting to bake bread. It virtually launched me into popularity among family and friends and into a lifelong committment to artisan baking. This book is full of beautiful photos of various delicious and interesting breads. The recipes and instructions are clear and easy for most anyone to attempt with excellent results. I love this book and have used it so much that my first copy got so tattered that I had to buy another copy. I have also purchased all of her other cookbooks and they are all worth owning.
Thankyou,
Anne Sullivan

[Suzanne Prendergast]

I would have to choose my old stained and greasy original edition of the Joy of cooking as my all-time favourite cookbook. I bought it from the Book of the Month Club when I was thirteen. At first, I spent hours happily browsing the recipes and then began to practice on my family. And my love of cooking was born. I have acquired and been inspired by many other cookbooks since then but the Joy of Cooking was my "first".

[claudette]

one of ny favorite cookbooks is anne lindsay's "light kitchen". it is easy to use, has some excellent ideas and some of the proceeds go towards united way and that is a good thing.

[Jessica McDiarmid]

MY favorite cookbook is the Joy of Cooking. I have a newer edition that includes heaps of info about how to buy, store, and prepare different ingredients including popular vegetarian items that were not in previous editions. The first edition was published in 1932. My Mom had an older edition when we were growing up that detailed (with pictures!) how to skin squirels and rabbits. My sis and I got a lot of squeal mileage out of those diagrams. I love this cookbook because it has almost everything you can imagine in it- all the basics from which to start and very detailed methods. I refer to the 'Joy Of' almost daily. The layout is perfect, is all info and little gloss, and is a plain good read to boot. At over 1100 pages there is very little material it does not cover.

[Pamela Latham]

The Indian Recipe Book
by Shehzad Husain and Rafi Fernandez
This wonderful book became mine because my mom got it as a present! She didn't ever try anything out of it as she thought Indian cooking is too involved. So did I until I started trying recipes from this cook book. Without fail each recipe I make turns out wonderfully and most can be ready to eat within 30-45 minutes. I have so much faith in it that I made an all Indian meal for my sister's birthday (for five people) using four recipes never before tried...big success!

[Nick Turner]

One of my favorite cookbooks is Looney Spoons - as a young college student, living away from home for the first time it saved me from a steady diet of beer and chips. Lots of simple, easy to follow, low-fat recipes for the cooking novice.

[Patricia St. Thomas]

My Betty Crocker cookbook is over 35 years old, has a stove burner burn mark on the red and white board cover, and many pages with food scraps and bits of cookie on to testify to it's use in my home. It is not beautiful any longer, shows the wrinkles one would expect from a life full of filling my family's taste buds.

[Cathy DeMerchant]

My favourite cookbook is "Kate Aitken's Cook Book" (1964). I now have my grandmother's copy, and when I was living at home in the early 1970's, I cooked my first 'gourmet' meal using my mother's copy of the cook book. I don't remember what meat I served that evening, but I do remember making "Potatoes au Gratin" and "Baked Alaska" from Kate Aitken's book. I suspect that my fondness for this book is because early success with some of the recipes gave me confidence in the kitchen.

[Christine McCubbin]

Like others, I don't have one favourite cookbook, but several.
There are the small town, church fundraiser type of cookbook, which have contributors' names and comments: I love to read what each person has said about their recipe. I have a number of these cookbooks, some of which I have bought myself, and others which were given to me as gifts. They are all special for different reasons.
Then there are the tried-and-true cookbooks which have all the basics: the ones I turn to the most are the relatively small, but basic Guide to Good Cooking by Five Roses, and the New World Encyclopedia of Cooking, by the Culinary Arts Institute.
In addition to a lot of specialty cookbooks, I find I use two others a lot: the three Harrolwsmith Cookbooks, and The Northern Cookbook, which was published by the Dept. of Northern Affairs for people living 'in the North'.
My 16 year old son has developed a real interest in cooking, and when exploring the coobook shelves, he goes to the Harrowsmith Cookbooks very frequently.

Christine Ladysmith

[Miriam in Victoria BC]

Hi Don
A chance to rave about a favourite cookbook!

First, I'll give you the provenance: Red Roses > Fanny Farmer > Vegetarian Epicure > Kitchen Culture > Mama Never Cooked Like This > Joy of Cooking. One day I discovered The Cook's Book by H Hillman, an encyclopedia of food ingredients with info on origins, storage, affinities, classic uses. It was like getting a toolbox for Christmas!

And now I own the Craftsman toolbox of cookbooks: The America's Test Kitchen Cookbook. This tome contains the results of test-kitchen/taste-testing of a fabulous range of recipes, from apple pie to winter suppers.

The authors explain what variations of each recipe were tested, what the results were, what made the bad bad and the best just that. They then improve the best and provide those recipes, plus many ways to vary them. Lots of quality photos, illustrations, and very readable text.

I really appreciate learning more about the science of success... it makes me a more confident cook. Everything I've made from this book has been a hit!

And may I recommend to you 'Polenta on the Board: Italian family cooking, Abruzzese style' by Victoria author Valerie Mitchell. Her Tacchino di Mama (My Mother's Turkey) and other recipes are delizioso. Lots of regional info and archival photos... a pleasure to read and cook from.

[Bob Plummer]

The cookboooks published by the Culinary Institue of America are my favorites. They are easy to read and they take the mystery out of preparing restaurant style/quality food. I really enjoy how they challenge me on ways to present elegant looking food. When we entertain at the house, no longer does simple dollop of smashed potatoes on the plate suffice.

[Carol Anne Caulfield]

What a conundrum! Narrow it down to one? I first started 'cooking' when I was 19 and hired as a cook's helper at a geological exploration camp in Dublin Gulch, Yukon...our cook went off on an 'excursion' with the cat skinner one night and didn't return to cook breakfast for the drillers and crew of about 40. The driller foreman offered me the job and I used the radio phone in his truck to call my Mom in the Lower Mainland..."Hi Mom, guess what? I'm the cook now!! How do I make gravy?!" It was an adventure...A cook from a placer operation nearby helped me out immensely and eventually I managed a chinese feast for 50, an Iranian geologist imparted some of his favourite dishes and skills and so on. I somehow obtained a copy of "Five Roses A Guide to Good Cooking" from the nearest town of Mayo and it is the most dishevelled, dog eared and stained cookbook in my collection. I must have succeeded with my basic cooking, because helicopter pilots would appear out of nowhere just when the cinnamon buns came out of the oven and I continued to cook during the summers to pay for my university degree in dietetics. Now, as a dietitian, I think the biggest challenge is to get people to take time to prepare and enjoy their food. I recommend a lot of different cookbooks, especially those written by our wonderful Canadian food writers but when I have a question or problem I most often go back to the good old Five Roses Guide to Good Cooking and of course, my Mom! I still have all of her hastily written sheets that she sent off in the mail to me in the Yukon, and now she has compiled hers and our family recipes into a cookbook on the computer with recipes that have come from Scottish and English generations...she only recently divulged the famous Bennett family Plum Pudding recipe, which she makes every year to flame at the Christmas dinner table, and I can't wait for it! My Goodness! I have gone on, but your request just sparked a gold mine of memories!! Merry Christmas to you!

[Kirk Meldrum]

The favourite book, from which I can cook,
Has been in the family generations,
It is basic yet diverse, complete details that are terse,
The foundation of our cooking collections,
It's a managable size with an index to prize,
"Fanny Farmer" has my acclaimations.

[Kristen Neil]

My all time most used and favorite is ... the Fanny Farmer cookbook. It's not beautiful but it is so useful. I give a copy to any of my friends who move away from home, get married or in somecases - divorced. I learned so much about the fundamentals of cooking from this book. I love big glossy page cook books to pour over during breakfast or lunch to get ideas for dinner, but without Fanny Farmer, I couldn't have gotten started.
Merry Christmas!
Kristen Neil - Ontario - heard you on CBC, all in a day.

[Sarah Power]

My new favorite cookbook is actually more of a cooking magazine called "Cook's". This inspirational publication is put out six times a year and has become a staple educational tool in my kitchen. A few characteristics that makes "Cooks" so helpful are-

1) The "Notes from the Readers". In this section anyone can write in and ask their quirky questions like "Why does ketchup clean copper tarnish" and readers can also offer up there own handy kitchen advise.

2) The "Quick Tips" section is fully illurstrated and packed with helpful hints.

3) The delicious recipes are created in America Test Kitchen and they have tested and rated everything from different preparation techniques, kitchen tools, cooking methods and quality/value of products.

4) Last but not least there is an oh so helpful "Recources" page which tells you where you can find different premium products.

This great publication is fully illustrated and is small enough (around 35 pages) to not be overwhelming.

I definitely recommend that other people who like to cook or want to learn to cook check "Cooks" illistrated Magazine.

[Miriam Fraser]

My favourite cookbook is Kate Aitken's COOK BOOK, given to me by my Mother for Christmas, 1977.
While much interested in eating I had little interest or talent in food preparation or presentation.

Kate Aitken first resulted in passable meals from my kitchen and then led to a much greater interest and success in cooking. I continue to use the book regularly to recreate meals I remember from our family kitchen table.

I also still use the Table of Equivalents, Fruit Yields, Substitutions included in the book.

I have now "graduated" to The Joy of Cooking as my cooking bible but could not have done so nor could I have gone on to the many other cookbooks I now use without the basic cooking knowledge I gained from Kate Aitken.

[Sue Batchelor]

Had my mom written a cookbook, I would pick hers, no question. She turned out consistently flawless rib roasts, pie crusts (Crisco and cool hands), and (without the aid of a microwave) meals with components arriving at the table all at the right temperature. I've not tasted more satisfying rice pudding or split pea soup nor have I been able to re-create them; she never recorded these or any of her other regular standbys.

Thankfully I do have her recipe for shortbread (borrowed), the special cake she baked for birthday celebrations (from a Wesson oil label), and her mother's mincemeat (but not the scales she used to weigh ingredients). I don't have a feel for food yet I'm always checking out recipe books, drawn to them with no particular goal in mind--it occurs to me as I write this, I'm probably looking for recipes of old favourites that sound as if they just might turn out to taste as good as mom's did.

[Jane Leach]

My very favourite cookbook is "Almost Vegetarian" published by the Australian Women's Weekly. I'm not a vegetarian myself but a number of my family members are and this necessitated my search for good nutritious recipes. I found what I needed in this cookbook, fabulous recipes with great pictures! I love it.

[Lori Hamoline in Ottawa]

What a great contest! Not only can I share my favorite cookbook, I now have more great cookbooks to look up!!

My family has always seemed like natural cooks - we all learned to cook on the farm in Saskatchewan and while our fare was relatively simple back then, we had the basics of flavour and experimentation behind us. As a result, for years while I loved to buy and read cook books,I couldn't seem to bring myself to follow a recipe....until I discovered "Cooking A to Z, The Complete Culinary Reference Tool" by the California Culinary Academy, edited by Jane Horn. This book has everything from the basics to international culinary delights and it got me hooked on following (and modifying) recipes to broaden my experience and menus. I'm still buying and reading cookbooks but always consult this book before making my final decision on how to prepare any particular dish.

This has been fun - Merry Christmas!!