Kitchen Survey: In the beginning there was... Your First Cookbook

I count my culinary adventures as beginning in college, when I was forced to fend for myself, and now, years later, I have countless cookbooks that attest to our wide-ranging culinary explorations. But in the beginning, before college, before high school, back in the dark ages of my junior high, there was one. My first cookbook ever...

Come and Get It: A Natural Foods Cookbook for Children by Kathleen M. Baxter and illustrated Mimi Orlando.

A family friend gave it to me back in... oh, that'd be telling. The pages are card-stock, and every 32 pages is a different color: yellow, lime green, orange, fuchsia. Someone knows children well. I don't remember cooking many recipes from it. I liked cooking, but I didn't really like food. Go figure. It'd be another five years or so before my taste buds would wake up and say "Hey, food is great!"

Paging through this relic of my childhood I catch glimmers of my future. Next to the peanut butter cookie recipes, I find a scrawled note in a pre-adolescent handwriting that reads "Missing something. Salt or sugar?"

I feel compelled to make those cookies and finally answer a young proto-cook's question: salt or sugar.

I invite you to share a story about your first cookbook.

Comments

[the ulterior epicure]

kitchen chick.

i'm a bit hesitant to admit that my first cookbook was a children's walt disney cookbook. sad, but true, daisy, mickey, daffy, donald and goofy gave me my first glipse into the culinary world. oh, and i also watched natalie dupree endlessly on our public network station (we were cable-deprived in our family until much later).

u.e.

[Dana]

The first cookbook I ever cooked out of was Il Talismano - I made pan di spagna on my own when I was 11 or 12 and have been baking and cooking out of it ever since.

My grandmother gave me another copy of it when I married so I wouldn't steal my mother's ;)

[Linda]

I don't remember the exact name of my first cookbook but I remember that it was a Betty Crocker children's cookbook with smiley-faced hamburgers on the cover. I was beyond excited when I received it as a gift and started planning my first meal immediately. It was with great delight that I decided to make the hamburgers featured on the cover and a recipe called "Salad in a Bag" for my family. Salad in a Bag basically consisted of cutting up salad greens and other veggies and placing them in a plastic storage bag. Then you added the dressing, sealed the bag, and shook the salad to get perfect dressing coverage. Very easy, but I was thrilled with this new "technique" at the time. The hamburgers were served open faced, with melted cheese on top and pieces of olives and peppers cut into the shapes of eyes, nose, and smiley mouth. I was so proud of this little dinner and it's funny that I can remember it so clearly after probably 20 years!

[kel]

My first cook book was at my bridal shower.

The joy of cooking.

Now I too am (soon) entering the world of blogging and sharing stories, photographed on the dishes at our family web store (click on me)
and am love to learn more.
I'll link you eventually...

Back on topic I love Donna Hay she's so easy
and love most of her dishes.
Esp. her pot roast.

[Johanna]

Wow, what a nice blog to discover! I'm a foodie moved to Ann Arbor this past year and happy to hear of other enthusiasts around.

I grew up on Filipino food, primarily, and sometimes Filipino-ized versions of other cuisines. I was a lazy kid and felt proud of myself for scrambling the occasional egg. I didn't start cooking until I moved into my first apartment. Then I'd always call home for real-time advice ("the onions are see-through, now what!?!"). I didn't know much to start but quickly discovered I really loved it!

My roommate had a brand new copy of one of those standard Betty Crocker cookbooks. Turned out I was the one who slopped up the pages from frequent use (she gave it to me in the end, very good-naturedly). The recipes weren't as useful to me as the charts, timetables, and tidbits of general advice. Not only was this cookbook my main source of knowledge on bona fide "American Food," it gave me understanding and basic tenets that my mom and aunt--practitioners, not theorists!--couldn't articulate (my aunt is a master chef, in my view, but she measures with the rhythm in her hands and a deep intuition that's hard to capture in words).

Anyway, since then I've learned from lots of different sources, and the Betty Crocker recipes that were not so spectacular then are even less so now. But I'm very grateful for its framework, and it's still the resource I'm most likely to go back to, for vegetable timetables, bird roasting instructions, meat cut definitions, baking info, that sort of thing.

[tina]

Come and Get It by Kathleen Baxter is and was my absolute favorite book for kids. My neighbor had it and someone borrowed it. I found two online. I ordered them. She lost hers borrowed mine and never returned it. I was soooooooo sad. I am a very good cook, but there are some special whole foods in this book to recommend to all. I miss it so much.

Alas, found a used copy online five years later.
It is a very sweet book. If you know the writer or her family, I would love to send a note and also find out the date. When did you receive this book.