Weekly Geeks 2009.14: What's Cookin?

Weekly Geeks this week is to talk about cookbooks! Well, they are books too, after all, right?

Here's what my cookbook collection looks like, housed in two shelves of a kitchen cupboard. Not so pretty, huh? The bottom shelf is what I use the most. On the upper shelf are ones I've thought about getting rid of, but just can't seem to do it. Also, there's a bunch of binders full of all my magazine recipe collections, back in the day when I managed to rip those out.

My favorite cookbooks are these two. A family collection, and a "quilter's" cookbook. I'm not sure what quilting and cooking have to do with each other, but it seems to work!

Here's the first cookbook I ever had. I LOVED this thing to death, and it shows!

One of my favorite things to do is to buy cookbooks as souvenirs from trips. One I love is from an Amish store, full of wonderful Amish recipes. I would have enjoyed buying cruise cookbooks, but they were extremely expensive, and too gourmet.

To answer some of the other questions:

-- I like to buy cookbooks with pictures. Yet the above mentioned favorite ones? No pictures.

-- I like cookbooks with easy "normal" ingredient recipes. No gourmet stuff.

-- I really like family and neighborhood/community cookbooks. Mostly because they have normal, no gourmet stuff!

And now a recipe that I just made last night that everyone nearly inhaled. It comes from the Quilter's Cookbook:

Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken Mixture:

1 carrot, sliced

2 potatoes, diced

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup flour

1 cup chicken broth

1 cup milk

1 tsp. sage

1/2 tsp. salt

1/8 tsp. pepper

2 cups diced, cooked chicken

1/2 cup frozen peas

Pastry:

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/3 cup soft butter

3-5 Tbsp. water

2 Tbsp. milk

1. Cook carrot and potatoes until soft.

2. Melt butter in saucepan. Add flour and cook over medium heat for one minute, stirring constantly. Add broth, milk and seasonings. Cook, stirring until thickened.

3. Stir in chicken, peas, carrots and potatoes. Pour into a 10 inch pie plate.

4. To make pastry, mix flour and salt in small bowl. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle in water and toss with fork until moist. Press into a ball.

5. Roll out onto well-floured surface. Lay over top of chicken ingredients in pie pan. Cut several slits for steam, and flute edge. Brush top with milk. Place pie pan on cookie sheet, because it's likely to run over!

6. Bake at 450 degrees for 20 min.

To make things MUCH MUCH easier I use: a can of chicken for the chicken, a prepared pie crust from the store, leftover potatoes already cooked, leftover vegetables of any kind. Last night I used canned carrots, and left out the peas. The possibilities are endless to simple it all up!

Tell me about your favorite cookbook!