I am halfway through reading this one.  I LOVE IT! He gives truly helpful insight on growing the veggies that are so yummy to cook! Awesome!

Let me just say that I am not a vegetarian. So my knowledge of veggie cookbooks is probably limited.  And the ones I have read usually make me buy a bunch of ingredients I know very little about or have a hard time finding - thus giving me limited odds of having a successful dish.

This book is loaded with simple recipes that are surprisingly awesome!  If I could keep from craving bacon, I could most likely go veggie using this book alone.

Lots of good information, yummy recipes and great photos.

I loooove to camp, so I picked up this little book on a whim. I feel silly listing a camping cookbook, but it's so darn good!  There are recipes in it that I use all the time at home.   Making the dishes in this book have made me a required attendee on all my friends camping trips and they request the 3 recipes I listed as favs all the time.  The flavored butters in the book are a brilliant idea for camping. I love how the book is written too.  The author talks you through the thought process behind planning your camping meals. ...

I absolutely LOVE this cookbook! And who doesn't love Jaime Oliver?  I have a couple other books of his, but only return to this one.  The pictures have great perspective. The writing is in Jaime's voice, which is very easy to read.  90% of the recipes are UN-fussy! (a huge plus in my book!)

The pappardelle/sausage/mushroom recipe is amazing! I can't even count the number of times I've made it.  If I had to pick just 5 cookbooks to keep, this would be one of them.

This is a GREAT book on making ice cream! The recipes are consistently delicious and easy to follow. There's a nice color picture for almost every single recipe and the text is easy to read, with plenty of white space around the edges for notes.  The Mint Chocolate Chip and Rocky Road recipes are the best I've had!

There are so many post-its sticking out of this book of mine, marking great recipes, that it looks a mess.  I can't count the number of loaves of bread I've made from this book and every single one - FABULOUS!

I don't have time for kneading and resting and rising and all those lovely steps that go along with bread-making. I work 70+ hours per week and spend many of them on the road.  But when I'm home, I want some good food.  If you have a bread machine, this is THE BOOK you must have.  Great insight, every kind of...

Sadly, this book is missing ROCKY ROAD! Not sure how they could overlook such a masterpiece of ice cream.  BUT the simplest recipe in the whole book doesn't require cooking the custard and is consistently requested by more people than I can count! French Vanilla.  For real, if you have an ice cream maker, buy this book, make the vanilla and be loved by one and all!

There are more to mention - like the Buttered Pecan, which is to die for! and the Kahlua Amaretto which is perfect during the holidays!  I could go on and on.

When I picked up this book at the library so long ago, I was known for being a horrid cook.  Seriously, I caught pancakes on fire once.  After I read this book, I was wholly INSPIRED!  I read every story, every recipe, every word in Biba's book and felt transported straight to Italy!

I promptly went over and had dinner, as her place is right in town - Sacramento.

She was there. I bought the book there and she signed it. AWESOME!

I haven't stopped cooking since and amazingly, my friends somehow think I'm a good cook these days.

I'm not gonna lie... they get an awesome rating from me mostly because of the PLACE!  Hello? Who else doesn't mind that line out the door in the morning. It's so worth it.  I have not tried any of the recipes in the book. BUT two of my friends have worked their way through a lot of them and you can believe that I was there to try each and every one of them! And they were all YUMMY!

I love this book for two reasons and two reasons only:

1. Being an engineer, this is written in the language I understand - pure logic.

2. I'm either cooking for just myself or a huge group, so I typically get annoyed at spending time trying to figure out how to adjust recipes.  This book tells me EXACTLY what to do.

I'm not crazy about the text-heavy, thin-paper pages or the way it's bound.  And whenever I try to sit down and read through it, I fall asleep.  But if I need to change a recipe, this is my reference book of choice.

Everything I know about cooking, I taught myself or learned from TV.  So this book as been like an encyclopedia for me.  Every single time I have a question in the kitchen, this is the first place I go and usually the place where the answer is found.

When you can't call Mom, pick up this book!

I love this book!  I saw it featured in the lobby of my library a year or so ago and checked it out.  I think I must've spent the whole weekend reading it.  I only tried a few of the recipes, but mostly loved it because it provided me so much insight into putting different flavors together.

I love this cookbook because it answers the simple questions I have as a non-expert-home-cook.  Like "I wonder if I can cook all my vegetables at the same temperature?" or "I wonder what herbs or spices go with X?"  Oh and every single recipe I have tried in this book makes me unable to say anything, but merely sounds like "MMMMMMMMMM at irf oooo gooo" with mouthfuls of food.

It's no gourmet froofy book, it's basics just like the title says and I like that!