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First cookbook used as a child - Better Homes and Gardens, circa late 60s. First cookbook used regularly as an adult - Joy of Cooking, late 70s. First cookbook as a more evolved adult - Vegetarian Epicure. I think that covers all of my firsts!

I received a copy of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook shortly after I graduated college. I brought it with me as a reference when I moved to London to shortly thereafter. I still refer to it today. I also have a well worn copy of The Joy of Cooking. After those, the cookbook that I find I actually reference the most often is Ming Tsai's Blue Ginger cookbook.

I inherited my Mom's 1972 paperback edition of James Beard's American Cookery. I refer to it all the time.

I think I'm part of the first generation for which the internet was the first real source of recipes. These days though, I'd rather look in cookbooks, as one can get a sense of the author's palette and whether it meshes with my own after cooking a few recipes. While I still use the internet all the time, I never really trust any of the recipes I find there - instead I sort of average out a few for the same dish.

The big red Better Homes and Garden's cook book. It was a hand me down from my mom when I got my first apartment.

Better Homes & Gardens like so many others! In college I graduated to How To Cook Everything, and Betty Crocker, now it's Joy of Cooking and too many others I've fallen in love with!

My first was the Joy of Cooking. I still have it, but I don't get much use out of it these days. I hope I win!

Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. I still use it. It maybe doesn't have the *greatest* recipes for everything, but it has *a* recipe for everything, and just about all the recipes I've tried from it are above average. The Minimalist knows his stuff.

The first cookbook I used was Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. It's what taught me how to cook.

I'm just now learning to cook for myself and I visit numerous blogs/ sites and choose recipes among them, compiling recipes in my pantry...besides reflecting my online habits, it's cheap and I appreciate comments/ tips from blogs that aren't necessarily in cookbooks.

Definitely Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. I used this book since I was in high school....

joy of cooking, I sitll love it.

BH&G childrens cookbook, then BH&G cookbook when I moved out on my own.

The first cookbook I used with any regularity was La bonne cuisine française. The chicken with tarragon, pommes anna and tarte au citron are among my favorites.

The first cookbook I ever used was The Moosewood Cookbook...sometimes it pays to have hippy parents.

I'm kind of embarassed to admit this on a serious foodie website, but the first cookbook I used regularly was 30 Minutes Meals (Rachael Ray). The recipes were quick and easy , which were my main criteria at the time. (I never learned to cook growing up and so it wasn't until I started grad school and my husband lived far away that I figured I better learn to cook something more than Kraft Dinner or Hamburger Helper!) I've since moved on to bigger and better things, but I this was my entry into cooking!

My initial cookbook arsenal consisted of Lukins' and Rosso's "The New Basics Cookbook" and the original "Frugal Gourmet." All creepiness aside, Jeff Smith was one hell of a cook. Both dog-eared and stained books taught me the basic fundamentals of cooking. I still use both regularly -- can't beat the Frug's grape leaves recipe.

I started small with A First Cookbook For Children that I got when I was about 6 years old and still have today. The french toast and chili pages are permanently fused together and I can't see them anymore. Also loved this one, that is sadly long gone from my collection, probably fell to pieces, called The Cowboy Cookbook that had stories and recipes from old chuckwagon cooks. Cooked a lot of that with my grandma. Though I use it now, I sure didn't start out with Larousse.

The first cookbook I used regularly was the Good Housekeeping Cookbook. I've never found a bad recipe in it!

I started with the Betty Crocker Cookbook, for actual cooking, but I loved just looking through all my mom's cookbooks.

I'm slightly loathe to admit this, but the first cookbook I ever loved/cooked more than a few recipes out of was the Weight Watchers cookbook put out by the Culinary Institute of America. Yeah, they're WW recipes, but they actually a) work, and b) taste good.

Betty Crocker walked me through my first quiche, and then a chocolate cake...

My first cookbook was also a children's cookbook. I don't recall the name, but I think it was put out by better homes and gardens. It opened up my eyes to the joys of waffles (or toast) smothered in peanut butter and sprinkled with chocolate chips! After I exhausted all the recipes in that book, I moved on to my mother's copy of Betty Crocker. This past christmas, she bought me my own copy.

An old copy of the Betty Crocker Cookbook handed down from my mom. I'm not sure if I've ever used it for much other than the suggested cooking temps/times for various cuts of meat. It helped me be less intimidated by big roasts and such.

Mine was, like many people have already mentioned, the well used red and white Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. My mom gave it to me to learn how to do simple recipes...recipes that I still sometimes make when I'm too stressed out to go for anything elaborate.

The first cookbook I remember using was an old Fannie Farmer cookbook of my mom's -- fromt the 70s I think. It was well used and slighly beaten up. My absolute favorite recipe from it was for French Silk pie -- such an easy recipe but so good. I lost the cookbook in a move many years ago (I'm pretty sure my ex ended up with it) and have never been able to find the same recipe -- the original recipe used raw eggs but any recipe I can find now doesnt. Fortunately, my mom was able to reember the raw egg version so we still make it to this day (and no one has ever gotten sick!).

The How-To Book of Healthy Cooking, published by Reader's Digest! My parents have had a Reader's Digest subscription for decades and were always getting the promoted books and special gifts. I "borrowed" this one from them when I was barely out of college. Even though I don't always search for "healthy" recipes anymore, I still go to this book from time to time because it has some very good basic templates for just about anything, and great illustrative photos. And it has a great middle alphabetized section on vegetables that breaks down cooking times for each vegetable if you want to steam, boil, grill, saute, bake, etc., so it's a handy reference tool as well.

The Joy of Cooking

Julia Child: Mastering theArt of French cooking - I love her books!

The Betty Crocker Cookbook was my first cookbook that I used to read as a kid and attempt to make things from. I now have one that I picked up at a garage sale.

The Joy of Cooking.

the new york times cookbook.

it was the very quintessence of sophistication to my 8-year-old palate.

The Joy of Cooking..... while growing up my mom would let me choose the recipies

a 70's era betty crocker cookbook from my mom's extensive, if underutilized, collection. to look at the book now, it's clear that my early culinary endeavors were confined to cookies, pies and cakes..

I taught myself to read beyond the old, "See Jane run. Run, Jane, run!" stage so that I could read cookbooks!

My grandmother had a topical series of hardback cookbooks put out by Sunset magazine. I think she had a very similar set from Better Homes and Gardens, too. The real draw with them both was the gorgeous photos, which in the 60s was almost unheard of. These books were rather thin at about a half inch of pages but a large format, measuring something like 9" x 12".

The first thing I made on my own was chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting to take to church when I was six. I had to break out the Baker's Chocolate and melt chocolate for both recipes. I'm pretty sure I wiped out my grandmother's kitchen, but the cupcakes must have been at least edible because there weren't any left to bring home.

Then, two weeks after I turned eight, I used a book called, "Blue Ribbon Recipes, The Best of County Fair Winners," copyright 1963, to win first place for oatmeal drop cookies at my local county fair. I was so mad at my grandmother because she chose the stupid three dollar prize for me instead of the big, glorious, blue rosette ribbon they used to give out back then. I'm still a little ticked. That three dollars is long gone, but I'd still have the ribbon.

Gourmet's Old Vienna Cookbook

Ah - good to see another southerner in the line up! The Southern Living Cookbook was my first. Although I have outgrown some of its recipes (e.g. mock-a-mole with mayonaise - the horror!), I still refer to it for southern basics, like banana pudding.

No question:

Best Recipe

gives you the absolute best preparation method for any food, then you consult other cookbooks or yor cupboards to get the spicing/flavor you want

The Joy of Cooking. Growing up it was my go-to book, because it had everything in it. Or at least everything my young ming was interested in.

At my parents' house it was my mom's well-used Fannie Farmer Cookbook (especially for baked goods). Once I was on my own it was the New Basics (which I didn't find very "basic" at the time, but I've grown into it!).

I was obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder as a kid, so my very first cookbook was the Little House one. Sadly, the recipes sounded better on the page than they tasted in real life!

Julia Child's The Way to Cook. Her black bean soup was one of my first dinner party recipes because all the various toppings she suggested sounded so fun and it was not expensive to make!

The first cookbook I used with any frequency was the first edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook for Children. The 70s included The Alice's Restaurant Cookbook, Veg Epicure and Moosewood. Silver Palette was definitely a favorite during most of the 80s into the 90s. Can't believe it's really been 25 years...

The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook was a college graduation gift and the first cookbook that I ever used on my own. I still use it at least once a week to this day!

The 60-Minute Gourmet by Pierre Franey got me on the road to good cooking. many other great cookbooks followed, but that one led the way.

Mine was the Craig Clairborne NY Times cookbook - I never use it anymore but I still have it, it's a classic

My first cookbook was the Better Homes and Gardens red and white looseleaf edition. I got in the early 1980s and loved the looseleaf format. Before that, I just used other peoples recipes or put foods together that sounded like they would taste good. This lemon chicken recipe from the Silver Palate Cookbook sounds excellent. Can't wait to try it. It would be so kewl to actually win the book and get to try some of the other recipes...... ;-)

The first I used regularly...must be pancakes from The New York Times Cookbook and the back of the Toll House Chocolate Chip package. My whole family has The Silver Palate and wherever I end up staying I can sit down are leaf through it to come up with recipes. I bumped into the 25th anniversary edition at BN last week and gushed over the beautiful pictures.

The Peanuts Cookbook..and the first recipe I made was for French Toast.

Better Homes and Gardens---1967, it was a wedding gift. My Mom who did all the cooking never used a cookbook but she was the greatest cook.

First cookbook I used a lot was Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.
I than proceeded to acquire the Fifty Cookbooks I'd Rather Not Live Without that he listed in his cookbook. Than things got serious.

the Leith's Cookery Bible! After taking a gourmet cooking class in England and getting my Leith's Basic Certification in Food and Wine. Hilarious. But that book has everything having to do with British cuisine, and therefore a lot of stuff that influenced the history of American cooking as well. Good stuff!

The Frugal Gourmet.

First cookbook I used regularly was Main Course Salads by Roy Overton.

Joy of Cooking--at the time I bought it, I was a total newbie and no idea how good or popular or influential it was. I just lucked out. I still refer back to it all the time, particularly when I need a recipe for something basic.

I only started cooking when I moved in to a home with a "proper kitchen" a little over a year ago (I'm 26). So I got started by using foodtv.com, epicurious.com, F&W, Gourmet and Martha Stewart's FOOD magazine. Since then I have collected a few books... I think that the best, or the one I've used most is Everyday Italian by Giada DeLaurentis. I also love F&W's Best of the Best.

It was a church cookbook sold as a fund-raiser out in the country in North Carolina. It has a great coconut custard pie, as well as some classic party snacks that I still make to this day.

The first cookbook that I used regularly was the Good Housekeeping American Cookbook.

Claudia Roden's and her guide to Middle Eastern Food. Dated as this book may be, I am quite convinced that it remains the most authentic, well researched and user friendly introduction to Arab cuisine available anywhere.

My first cookbook was Jacque Pepin's La Technique. What a master!

My first was the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I still refer to it all the time when I need a quick and easy idea for dinner.