Reader Question: "What cookbooks are in your kitchen?"

I've had a request from a reader to reveal what cookbooks I not only own but from which I actually cook.  Despite this day and age of the internet, and even the recent goldmine of Pinterest, I still have cookbooks and refuse to throw some of them out because they are invaluable to me.  I thought this was a great question, so here we go...

#1 Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, 10th Edition
This is a 1,000+ page cooking "bible".  This is a gift that our mothers and their mothers received at their bridal showers to teach them how to cook (if they did not already know).  A few years ago, we decided to add baked to our potato repertoire.  I hadn't baked a potato in I don't know how long, so I went to my BH and G book and looked up "Potato, baked p. 904".  I need to consult page 904 so frequently that I have ear-marked it.  It tells me how to bake white potatoes and sweet potatoes in the oven and in the microwave.  Since I'm getting up there in age, I cannot waste precious brain cells with memorizing these details.  That is one of the many, many reasons I keep this very valuable cooking "bible".

#2 Any and all Season's Best cookbooks from The Pampered Chef
If you've ever been to a Pampered Chef show you know about these gems.  32-page cookbooks full of great recipes for appetizers, entrees and desserts for $1! Their Chocolate Pecan Lattice Tart from the Fall/Winter 2006 edition has made every guest of mine who's tried it very happy and me very popular!  These little cookbooks also make great gifts.

#3 Southern Living Ultimate Book of Appetizers, 2001
I bough this little 48-page cook, that looks just like the paperback Pampered Chef $1 ones, from a Southern Living home show.  Does Southern Living still have a home show business?  Anywho, it's a great hostess book to have.  The most used recipe that, on it's own, has been worth the cost is the Creamy Pumpkin Dip.  Once I've served it, I get asked for the recipe and I get asked to make it again and again.

#4 The Pampered Chef All The Best
A great cookbook for entertaining or feeding your family and another great gift for the new cook.  You'll never go wrong when you entertain with Pampered Chef appetizer recipes!  This book has my popular apps - Spinach and Artichoke Dip, Tomato Basil Squares, Tex Mex Chicken Melts and more.  Plus lots of good for the soul dinners and desserts.  No one gives you better wreath-shaped, filled crescent roll dinner ideas than The Pampered Chef.

#5 The Pampered Chef 29 Minutes to Dinner
This is a great cookbook for us busy moms who don't want to or can't spend a lot of time in the kitchen every day.  There are 4 sections - poultry; fish and seafood; beef and pork; meatless.  Some of their recipes that have become staples in our dinner rotation are: Lightening Fast Veggie Chili, Brown Butter Tortellini with Spinach and Ham, Tex Mex Chicken and Rice Skillet and Sun Chip Chicken (B's all-time favorite dinner).

#6 and #7 The Pioneer Woman's first 2 Cookbooks 
Ree Drummond and I are kindred spirits; we have so much in common!  We're both redheads; married to hot, strong, humble men; love to cook; have our awkward moments; homeschool; love to see the beauty in nature; make lots of money blogging for our millions of readers...OK, maybe not that last one.  ;o)  But we love a lot of the same foods and both the hubs and I use her cookbooks.  Her Restaurant-Style Salsa and Pico de Gallo are staple condiments in our house now.

#8  and #9 Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day and Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day
Now, I don't own these books, although they've been on my Christmas list for 2 years now.  But I check them out from the library frequently because Dr. Hertzberg and Ms. Francois have finally gotten me to love baking my own bread.  These books are very popular in my county's library system because I have to return them due to others' requests.  But I just get myself back on the waiting list and check them out again when it's my turn.

I do have other cookbooks on the shelves that I use infrequently or not at all (in fact, the hubs has asked me to please cull through the cookbooks) but these are the ones out of which I get a lot of use.

Thank you for your question, reader; this was fun!  If you have a question or a topic you'd like to hear my opinion on, email me at youmeandb1@gmail.com or post it to my Facebopk page, whichever you feel more comfortable doing, and maybe I'll feature it here.  :o)

Leftover Wednesday - The Pioneer Woman's White Chili

I actually had 2 leftover nights in a row this week, but I am only going to tell you about 1 today and I'll save the other for later.  We had The Pioneer Woman's White Chili.  I have wanted to make white chili for a few years now but the hubs discouraged me.  He is not a fan of chili at all.  I don't blame him.  I never ate it growing up and it looked gross - all that ground beef and beans nobody eats except disguised in chili...  Well, I now make a yummy vegetarian chili that I can not get enough of, but the hubs still doesn't want me to make it.  You see, his tummy cannot take cooked tomatoes.  And canned tomatoes are the staple for any home manager feeding a family on a budget!  *sigh*  Anywho, his need to stay away from tomatoes was the perfect reason, in my book, to make white chili, but he wasn't having it.  Probably because we both thought it had to involve ground chicken or turkey which, let's face it, is usually dry when cooked.

But Ree Drummond came to the rescue and provided me with a fairly simple White Chili recipe that uses pulled chicken meat, not ground.  And that's not even the best part!  This recipe not only helped me clean out the fridge, but also clean out the pantry.  *insert angels singing, here*

I did not make White Chili with the intention of it being a Leftover Wednesday meal.  It had just been on my mind since watching Ree's Food Network show over the weekend, on which she made regular chili.  I went looking for a recipe yesterday so I could get the necessary ingredients at our big, bi-weekly grocery shopping trip, which is tomorrow.  As I read through the ingredients list, I went on a hunt through the house to find out what I did and did not have.  Turns out I had it all in the house already and I didn't even know it!  I don't even know why I bothered looking, that's how sure I was that I had nothing but I'm so glad I did.  I found the block of Monterey Jack cheese in the freezer (had no idea it was there!) and half a bag of Great Northern beans sitting on the pantry shelf in the basement along with a can of diced, green chilies.  3/4 of the remaining cilantro in the fridge was melting (if you buy cilantro regularly, you know what I'm talking about) but there was one handful's worth completely untouched, so I ripped it off and used it.  Sill jalapeños in the fridge from the guacamole-that-never-was Memorial Day weekend and 1 onion and half a head of garlic left.  Chicken stock and chicken is always on hand and don't ask me why I have Masa.  Don't even remember why or when I bought it but I'm glad I did!  It was divine intervention that this dish came together this week, I'm tellin' you!  I do have to say, the thawed chicken breasts sitting in the bowl in the picture, above, don't look right.  I can identify a couple of body parts that are not fit for mixed company.  Moving along...

The original recipe said it made 8 servings.  I halved it and got 5, 1 cup servings, which was plenty to feed the adults in this house.  And if you are on Weight Watchers, 1 cup of this stuff = 8 points, with 4oz of cheese in the pot, no extra in your bowl.  The 3 of us had 2.5 cups total at dinner and then I froze the rest in a quart-size freezer bag for another night.

Ree's chili is not as wet as mine and her beans are bigger.  The hubs loved the chili but did comment the beans seemed a little underdone because there was some firmness to them.  There totally was and I know why.  The beans were old.  I believe I bought the bag originally when we tried B on the Feingold Diet 4 years ago.  So, it will get added to the rotation and I will buy new beans!  Let me know if you try this one!