Better Homes and Gardens Annual Recipes 2017

As I prepare to purchase a new BH&G cookbook, I write this small obit for my old one. It had around forty years of life. It is torn, the spine has separated and fallen apart, some pages are stuck together, others are smeared and smudged, and there are sticky notes on hundreds of pages. But it was a good cookbook. It was the best.

Because of Betty (and Joy of Cooking), there was no recipe that could challenge me. Following instructions is easy, but Betty showed me how to cook. She taught me when I could substitute ingredients and when I couldn't. Betty taught me how to do nearly all the cooking techniques without a hitch until I could intuit when they should be used for different ingredients. Sure, there are new ones now, but really, is show more there anything better than her old-fashioned chicken fried in good old Crisco? I'll never stop making that coleslaw recipe. Thanksgivings wouldn't be the same without her. However, I've never made a gelatin mold and that probably won't change.

Goodbye old Betty. Hello new Betty. show less

An effing classic. If you want your mom's or grandmother's cooking, find their book and don't let your sibling's grubby paws touch it. It'll never see the light of day again otherwise.

Besides being a valuable source of great recipes, it doubles as a sacred repository, precariously holding betwixt its leaves innumerable slips of news clippings which are the key to multiple generations worth of nostalgic BS and simultaneously serves as the secret in passing along core memories to your own younger family. This is gold and you'd be the fool to lose it.

Heh. This was my mother's go to cookbook. 5-ring binder, clear vinyl flyleaf, photographs galore; this is the first edition, 2nd printing, (1953). I will never forget the Pecan-dotted Butter-scotch rolls, the unbelieveable lard-based pie crusts for mincemeat pies, soaked in brandy: (which could kill if you ate more than 2 slices - but I guarantee you would die happy!!) And the peach cobbler - there is nothing that even comes close. Guaranteed to turn your arteries to stone, but what a flavor!!

This is a tried and true favorite. I've been using this cookbook in various forms since 1977 and it remains authentic, real, reliable, and always good. Recently I revisited the chocolate cream pie and was reminded again of just how much better homemade tastes than pudding from a box. Thank you Better Homes and Gardens for never disappointing!

This is my go-to cookbook for virtually all of my general cooking and baking. If the recipes lack inspiration or variety, that's something that an inventive cook can compensate for. I own two editions, and comparing the changes in recipes (older recipes use more shortening, newer recipes more butter or margarine) has taught me a lot about substitution and cooking chemistry. As much as I love the wealth of recipes available on the internet, it is to this book I turn first when I want a trusted recipe that I know will work.

Recommendation: Give this to someone moving into their first house or apartment. Maybe it will only decorate the kitchen, but it might start a lifelong love of cooking.

I have several editions of this classic book, the one I grew up with and that was my main cook book when I set up housekeeping in the 1970s. As my mother said, it has the best basic recipes for baked goods like bread, biscuits and cookies.

My volume is so overused that the chapter tabs are mostly missing.At one point several years ago, I typed a couple dozen of my favorite recipes onto 4x6 index cards to help preserve the book.

Now I have my mother's copy of the same edition. It's much neater. But the edition I grew up with in the 1950s had some recipes -- Aunt Susan's lemonade, date layer bars. Lord and Lady Baltimore cakes, marguerites with their odd combination of saltine and marshmallow -- that disappeared from later books, so I also show more have a copy of the 1951 edition. A very nice "souvenir edition" copyrighted in 1965, commemorating the sale of 10 million of these guys, has a design is between the 1950s and 1970s editions (tending more toward the ugly food photography of the earlier era). It has a "washable" gold-tone cover and the signature ring binder that makes you have to reinforce the holes as the pages tear away. show less

I have a few of these lying around. I don't think I've ever used one. The reason I keep buying more of these ringbound cookbooks at estate/garage sales is because I keep finding Grandma's/Auntie's secret trove of handwritten favorites in them. It's probably unethical of me to keep them, but I frankly can't help myself. To quote Debbie Reynolds in In and Out: "It's like heroin".