Joy of Cooking
Irma Rombaur - jan 3, 2013

This is the cookbook I go to for everything I feel I should know how to make but don't. Or can't remember the details of, like oven temperatures for various meats, measurements of water for different grains and cooking times for types of rice. If there is something new that I want to try, I always look here first.

This was also my mother's go to cookbook, perhaps the only one she ever used. So the meatloaf, mac & cheese and chicken pot pie all taste right to me. Joy of Cooking has been around since 1931, with eight different editions, most recently published in 2008. Mine is the 1997 edition. My mother's must have been from 1964 or maybe 1975. I'll have to ask.

While I am glad that I can recreate many dishes from my childhood and learn vast quantities of information about cooking all sorts of things, I am sorry to report that my version does still contain a recipe for Candied Sweet Potatoes and something called Golden Glow Gelatin Salad. If there were two foods I could remove from my youth it would be those. At least the sweet potato recipe leaves off the marshmallows.