Betty Crocker

This is my all time favorite holiday cookie book... It might be my favorite cooking/baking book in general. I love how ridiculous and terribly outdated some of the cookies are... it's so bad sometimes that it's charming. This book is best used for inspiration, and it's almost always a good idea to find an updated recipe elsewhere that'll have a more delicious and authentic outcome than Betty could offer, but the contents are so prolific that it just can't be beat. It's like an encyclopedia show more of cookies compiled by an insane Grandma who always meant well. This book reminds me of oleo, believing in Santa, and a time when I was too innocent to notice when a cookie was clearly shaped like a penis. show less

In 1976, I put this book on layaway at Alco in Roswell, NM, along with cloth diapers, yellow and green baby clothes and booties -- back in the days before credit cards, sonograms and gender reveals. I made my micro payments regularly. They added no additional charges and there was no cut-off date either; their remarkable policy was "as long as you make regular payments on your layaway." It was a thrill when months later I made the last $10 payment and had all the precious things I had so show more carefully planned and selected.

By then I had also saved enough S&H Green Stamps to buy a Oster blender for my plan to make homemade baby food after I had stopped nursing. In the late 70s my choices weren't the norm, but I didn't care. It was precious times with my first baby.

It was the only cookbook I had for many years. If a recipe wasn't in it, I called my mom. I called my mom a lot for her help and advice. She had gotten extremely smart by then. ;)

I'm vegan now, and in countless ways things have changed. Me and my book both have seen better days. As an ode to those years, to my mom's help, and to my baby who has grown up to love eating her vegetables, my ragged copy sits still on my shelf.

My favorite recipe? Steak Diane! For special occasions. show less

Impressive and a must-have for beginning cooks. I picked this up in a second hand shop and even though it was published 15 yrs ago (1998), the information is universal and timeless.

My 11 yr old is branching out beyond baking (she is my Red Velvet Cake and Pie Queen). While this cookbook is not geared toward children, my daughter easily navigated the skills and techniques, tips, recommended tools, and of course we are plowing through the perfect "staple" recipes which are quite good (Betty C show more in the house!). Ill be teaching my teenage boys from this as well.

The sections are indexed by grilling, pasta, salads, treats, main dishes, etc...and also includes sections on metric conversion, basic equipment and gadgets, how to measure wet/dry ingredients, purchasing knives, food safety/storage, substitutions, and even a section on three "get-together" meals (e.g. Thanksgiving dinner)...just to name some highlights.

A huge plus is that I dont crack the spine to keep this open. The hardback with spiral binding makes for easy hands-free reading. Traditional book binding in a cookbook should be banned.

I highly recommend this for first time cooks, or for someone seeking more confidence in the kitchen. show less

In August 2008, I moved out on my own for the first (and only) time, and I had never consistently cooked before. Bereft of any better ideas, I headed to my local bookstore and picked up this, mainly due to its promising-sounding title. Now, almost two years later (and as my time living on my own comes to an end), I've finished fifty-eight of its hundred-something recipes, but given I've done basically all of the ones that appeal to me, that means I'm done with it. Friends of mine on facebook show more (and indeed, enemies since it is a public photo album) have seen many of these recipes chronicled on the infamous Food Log, complete with "amusing" commentary.

Overall, it pretty much lives up to its title. Most of the recipes do take only thirty minutes, though many of them cheat by not counting time spent chopping vegetables and the like. At least one even listed "cooked pasta" in the ingredients, which seems like an exceptionally large cheat to me! None of these recipes are ever going to win awards for greatness, but many of them were enjoyable, and some of them were very good indeed. I used a simple notation systems as I made them: check-plus for worth making again, check for acceptable, check-minus for avoid. There were about a dozen checks-- usually for being bland-- and only a couple things that earned check-minuses. Of course, I tended to just not make things I thought I wouldn't like, which I'm sure helped.

I liked most of the soups I had, especially the spicy noodle soup, a nice chiliesque soup. The "meaty main dishes", mostly beef or pork based, were generally good, though I had a run of boring things in picadillo, goulash, and Italian burgers, all of which I'm sure were extremely authentic. The "taco Joes" in this section where intended to be some kind of Mexican equivalent to a sloppy Joe put in a taco shell, but I repurposed them as a chip dip that I designated "sloppy Josés", and my friend Jorge amended that to "sloppy Estebans". There were a ton of poultry dishes, which makes sense since chicken is pretty hard to mess up; I really liked the jambalaya recipe. Also a lot of pastas, many of which were good. How hard is it to mess up some kinda sauce on some kinda noodle? I didn't really dip into the side dish or dessert sections, as I don't often make either. (Cooking for only myself, most of these recipes supplied four-plus meals as is.) I'm sure I'll continue to dip back into the book from time to time now that I know what the good stuff is.

Only one big complaint: the book's "Cincinnati-style chili" contains several gaffes that indicate it is nothing of the sort. There are beans in it, but even worse, the only seasoning is chili powder, when proper Cincinnati chili is distinguished by its use of cinnamon if nothing else! My grandmother's recipe also includes allspice, bay leaves, red pepper, A-1 steak sauce, garlic powder, and cumin, and I can't imagine what you would get without this delicate balance. show less