Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

i go to mcdonalds and get a mc-double with whopper special sauce, and a hot and spicy chicken sandwich, since i wake up after breakfast haha. then i take the mc-double and pull it apart right in the middle. then i take the entire hot and spicy and put it between the two patties of meat and smush it down. it works wonders and doesnt even taste like mcdonalds.

for some reason, i actually embrace my hangovers; it means that there's a ton to discuss with my girlfriends the next morning! we'll typically cruise over to a local burger joint and get their saturday special (huge greasy cheeseburger, thick-cut fries, and a large soda... i always opt for water instead of the soda). if they're not around, i'll brew some coffee, and then pick up a huge plate of pad thai, which is so big that i'll snack on it throughout the day.

cheers!!

For years I went to Martha's Vineyard in August and entertained
using a cookbook I bought at a local bakery--Scottish Bakehouse
Cookbook by Isabella White. I used it until the pages came unglued
and put a rubberband around it. Julia inspired me to just use a
cookbook as a starting point and create your own style. Thanks, Elaine

The French Chef, of course! When we were married 38 years ago, my husband-to-be's next door neighbor gave us a Swing Way can opener and a copy of The French Chef. I have been using both all these years, but the French Chef has many more miles on it. I was 19, had never cooked and knew back then, in a very un-feminist way, that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach. It worked! I love this book and always will.

Urban Italian: Simple Recipes and True Stories from a Life in Food, by Andrew Carmellini. I'm a vegetarian, but there are still plenty of recipes for me to try. I repeatedly take it out of the library. Please, someone buy me this book for Christmas!

An autographed copy of Craig Claiborne’s New York Times Cookbook. One evening after a school dance, friends descended on my parent’s home and one of them piped up, “Where’s the eggs benedict?” I popped into the kitchen and shortly produced something resembling poached eggs with Hollandaise. (One egg never made it past the side of the stove.) From that first effort, I prepared several other winning recipes like Knockwurst in beer. Fast forward 15 years and dozens of other cookbooks and I am co-author of Passport to New York Restaurants and auction correspondent for Wine Spectator.

The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen by Grace Young. The dishes really tastes like the ones I had growing up.

The James Beard Cookbook ~ my very first cookbook from which I learned that there was more to cooking than my mother's standard operating procedure of putting a hunk of meat under the broiler, plopping frozen vegies into pots of boiling water, and pitching potatoes into the oven to bake.

Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book, my mom used hers all the time and now that I'm away from home I use the one she bought for me! just the classics : )

My grandmother's cookbook, which is a collection of her own recipes as well as others she's cooked and tweaked to make her own throughout the years

The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen by Grace Young
For its authentic recipes and techniques, as well as demystifying certain ingredients

Nigella Lawson - Nigella Bites