It’s hard to imagine being a real Foodie,  lover of food and not owning several cookbooks.  That’s not to say that you need to actually make any of the recipes although that would be the expected thing to do, you can just leaf through the pages.  Sometimes I do that, it’s like window-shopping.  I think of it as grazing without actually eating, a behavior known to perpetual dieters who can visually satisfy themselves (I’m not really one of those).

Besides The Joy of Cooking (I’m not a fan), there literally thousands of cookbooks available in every Barnes & Noble and through Amazon.  That’s not to mention the great recipe sites such Allrecipes.com, MarthaStewart.com, the cooking magazines and the hundreds of niche blogs dedicated to cooking and eating.  I could easily recommend  a cookbook a day for the next 18 days but I’m not going to do that.

Today my Foodie gift of the day is a cookbook written by Mark Bittman of the New York Times.  It can be purchased at Amazon.com for $25.75.  The cookbook is 

How To Cook Everything

Don’t be put off by the fact that the author is a New York Times staff writer.  Believe me, I’ve made several of his recipes that were featured in the Dining Section of the newspaper and we’re not talking gourmet ingredients and techniques.