Help Me Choose New Cookbooks!

[Elisabeth]

I'm trying to fulfill my membership requirements at The Good Cook, and I have a coupon to use, and they're having some special buy one-get-one-free deal, so I'm ready to expand the cookbook collection once again. Here's what I've narrowed it down to choose among:

Lora Brody's Slow Cooker Cooking
Pam Anderson's How to Cook without a Book and/or The Perfect Recipe
Sally Schneider's A New Way to Cook
Better Homes & Garden Treasured Recipes
Williams Sonoma Simple Classics Cookbook
The Baker's Dozen Cookbook
The Best American Recipes 2001-2002
The Elephant Walk Cookbook
Maryana Vollstedt's Big Book of Casseroles

Any of these definitely not worth the investment? Anything a definite yes?

[Portia]

I would highly recommend The Baker's Dozen and The Best American Recipes 2001-2002 . The Best American Recipes has a wonderful mix of recipes from magazines, other cookbooks and online sources.
~Portia

[HRJ]

Elisabeth, I'd avoid the Slow Cooker Cooking. I got that as one of my four free books when I joined The Good Cook, and regret it -- the recipes are:

1) a little too elaborate -- my main reason for using the slow cooker is ease of preparation -- I want to be able to toss some things in, turn it on, and forget about it until 4-6 hours later;

2) kind of weird. There was a thread about this book a month or so ago on the BB, and someone pointed out that the book has something like six or seven recipes for duck in the slow cooker.

(The consensus on the other thread was that Betty Crocker's slow cooker book was the best on the subject).

I recently got How to Cook Without a Book and while I haven't tried it yet, it looks really good. I'm going to crack it open this week.

Don't know about any of the others.

I, too, am thinking about ordering from this month's Good Cook catalog -- if you don't mind my "piggybacking" on your post, this is what I'm considering:

5 A Day: The Better Health Cookbook by Dr. Elizabeth Pivonka and Barbara Bery
Amazing Soy by Dana Jacobi
Simply Salmon by James Peterson
Vegetables Every Day Jack Bishop

Helene

[HRJ]

Back again -- I just used a recipe from How to Cook Without a Book for tonight's dinner, and was very pleased. (Butternut Squash Soup -- with some variations). I'd definitely recommend this one.

Helene