7 cookbooks: What would you choose?

[Amaranth]

If you had just 7 cookbooks, what would you choose?
General cookbooks, ethnic cuisines, ones for a particular cooking method, a local cookbook?

Also what do you think is the most useful general-encyclopedic type cookbook?

[razz]

I love my Cook Great Food from the Dietitians of Canada so it is # 1. It is my newest and most used.
my Larousse Gastronomique is an old favourite that answers my questions,
Putting Food By for food preservation,
several of the very old Better Homes and Gardens series for cookies, cakes, yeast bread and quick breads
In Praise of Cooking booklet from Magic Baking Powder has favourite recipes,
The complete Vegetarian

Edited to add that I had two large full shelves of cookbooks because I really enjoyed looking for new ideas and how someone else had chosen to make dishes. Now I have a small space about 12" which contains all I have.

[iris lilies]

Other than the Joy of Cooking i wouldnt want more cookbooks. And really,
i would expect to find anything in Joy of Cooking on the web, but it might take a moment or two to fnd an authoritative sorce.

[JaneV2.0]

Sunset's Easy Basics for Good Cooking and Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking (the only veg cookbook I saved). I have lots of others that I read through, but I rarely use cookbooks unless measurements need to be exact--as in baking.

[catherine]

I agree with IL. I don't refer to my cookbooks anymore--I find everything I need on the web. However, I do have this really great subscription to Plan to Eat, which automatically downloads and stores recipes from the web in just one click, and enables you to create menus and queues for your favorite recipes.

[iris lilies]

I still have some cookboks but they are not encyclopedia types. I have one Indian cookbook for inspiration and a few others that have come here over the years.

DH has about 3 he references.

I do like to flip through cookbooks from the public library.

[rosarugosa]

My DH loved his Betty Crocker's (that his mother bought him when he first moved out) to death, and he was delighted when we found him a second-hand copy in great condition online, since it is out of print.

[herbgeek]

There's the Joy of Cooking of course. I really only use cookbooks when I'm looking for inspiration for something special or ratios are important (so baking and preserving), so then I have a Crabtree and Evelyn one, and a couple of the Silver Palate ones for inspiration. I have several preserving cookbooks with only a handful of recipes I use in each, so no recommendation there. There's one Indian cookbook I use a lot as I'm still learning ratios "The Indian Cookbook". My favorite picnic cookbook is The Picnic by the Portland Picnic Society. This time of year I can't do without "The Classic Zucchini Cookbook" and then in the fall I switch to using Recipes from the Root Cellar (root veggies and greens).

[Chicken lady]

The joy of cooking - not the latest edition (I made sure each of my kids god one from the 70's). And "putting food by" - most up to date edition.

[Selah]

"The Joy of Cooking."
"Laurel's Kitchen"
Any of Claudia Roden's cookbooks on Middle Eastern cooking
Any of Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks on Indian cooking
Those are essentially the only ones I use regularly, although I do have one called "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker" which is also very good.