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The Silver Palate was my first "adult" cookbook purchase in the mid 90s. It was still pretty ground breaking for Arkansas then, even though it was almost 10 years old!

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I ate at the restaurant in Ithaca and bought the book while there. Both were life changing. Simple, fresh, whole foods. I recommend this book to everyone.

I learned to cook from the New Basics, and since then, a seminal cookbook comes along once every few months for me...one I lug around and dream about. The most recent was Alford and Duguid's Seductions of Rice.

Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian has completely changed my cooking style. I used to plan specific meals day by day, painstakingly going through on Sundays and writing out entire recipes and wracking my brain to figure out what I would cook. Now, I keep my pantry stocked with staples then go to the Farmer's Market, pick up a bunch of whatever is available, and I'm confident I can provide delicious, nutritious meals. It's also made me unafraid to tackle even the "weird" items at the market.

Silver Palate is definitely one of those cookbooks that was held in high esteem in my house. When I moved out for university I asked for a copy for Christmas. I was so enamored by the book I tried to find the shop when I went to NYC for the first time in 2001. I wrote about it here http://kitchengraffiti.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-york-citys-sweet-sweet-cupcakes.html
Yup, Silver Palate was essential to nurturing my love of cooking.

Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I don't use it for recipes anymore, but reading through that cover to cover many times over, I know can put together a meal with any random ingredients in the fridge and cabinet. Knowing incredible flavor combos as opposed to "recipes" is what changed the way I cook.

My two life-changers are The North African Kitchen and 1080 Recipes.

They opened my eyes to a world of foreign food that wasn't simply Americanized Italian or Mexican cuisine!

Before I purchased Molly Katzen's New Moosewood Cookbook 15 years ago, my vegetarian diet consisted of quesadillas and cheese pizza. I'm so grateful that Molly introduced me to the simplicity and nutrition of tasty veggie stews and casseroles. The first time I rolled out my own dough for homemade calzones, I knew that I was hooked on cookin'.

I remember my mom being really excited to buy the Silver Palate back in the 90's and making recipes from them very nervously. We definitely did not eat like we do now...dinner was usually chicken wings and rice. Now she brags to me every day about what cool things she makes. If only she did that when I was a kid, not when I was 27.

Simply in Season by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-wert. I have enjoyed this cookbook so much that I've also gifted it to two other families. It helps me take full advantage of locally grown produce and I'm now a huge convert to the idea of cooking/eating with the seasons.

http://www.amazon.com/Simply-Season-World-Community-Cookbook/dp/0836192966/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242233104&sr=8-1

Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I don't use it that much anymore, but it definitely jump started my baking (especially bread of course).

The first cookbook I purchased with my own money was the Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook. I was 14 and had been cooking for my family for a while. I will keep this copy until it's splattered and totally unreadable. I probably, subconsciously, held every cookbook I bought after that to the same great standards of being an entertaining book to read, chockfull of information I don't already know, and filled with recipes I'll want to make for myself and for friends. I'll stop now before the tears seep through the screen. Thanks for the post.

Hands down, these:

Supernatural Foods - Heidi Swanson

All the Moosewood Cookbooks - love them.

Sally Schneider - the Improvisational Cook, Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian and Martha Stewart's Good Food Fast.

I got them from the library when I first moved on my own and could hardly believe what I had discovered. I asked for them as Christmas gifts that year.

Oh man.

What’s up with the Midwest haterating? I’m truly curious as to what Wisconsin you were in, since no part of the state is very far from a vibrant terrior, long-standing farmers markets, and quality artisanal foods.

Lets say for argument’s sake that you were in the urbanest part of urban Milwaukee. Well, I grew up in that part of Milwaukee, and in the early 80s I remember The Fondy and (fondymarket.org) and The West Allis Farmers Markets (which dates back to the 1920s) were selling picked-by-the-headlights veggies, flowers and way back in the day, live chickens. Ahead of the curve on sustainability & local food by leaps and bounds, as well as food security as a social justice issue? You betcha. Which is why we have foodwarriors like Will Allen now: growingpower.wordpress.com.

Or howzabout the gazillion award-winning beers, cheeses and other tasties? Sprecher beer (www.sprecherbrewery.com) got its start in the early 80s, and we would trek to their teensy brewery in the industrial valley to get bottles of their seasonal OctoberFest and made-with-honey root beer. Lakefront Brewery (www.lakefrontbrewery.com) wasn’t far behind.

Last weekend I bought cheese at Cedar Grove Cheese Factory (www.cedargrovecheese.com), just one, JUST ONE of a gazillion award-winning cheese factories in the state that have been around for oh I don’t know, a century?

So then you were out in the countryside? Sounds like you went to Piggly-Wiggly instead of the farmstand down the road, and were too uptight to shake hands with your neighbor…

If you had trouble finding high-quality ingredients in Wisconsin in the 80s, it sure isn’t our fault.

I'm really dating myself, but the first cookbooks I remember cooking out of were The Vegetarian Epicure (books 1 and 2). The books came out in the '70s, but I was using them circa 1981.

They changed my life in many ways, not just in what I ate and cooked. I embraced her whole aesthetic and spirit; it was a great time!

I also have to put in a plug for food writers. Basically, my mom was too cheap to buy cookbooks (maybe one of those useless ones in the sales bin, or a paperback version of Diet for a Small Plant, but that was as far as she went), so for the longest time, I had to rely solely on the food writers in newspapers. But hey, they rocked my world! I still make some of those recipes, over 25 years later! I remember the great Margo Oliver of the Montreal Gazette -- she taught me how to make REAL buttercream, and the 6 layer torte with buttercream and dacquoise is still part of my repertoire, as is the one with strawberry flavoured buttercream. Oh, and the peach recipes!

And then there were the food writers at the Calgary Herald. The late Cinny Willet, and the cherry and cornmeal cobbler, or the Swiss carrot torte.

Marian Burros of the NYT and her menus became our weekday bible -- 30 Minute Menus and Eating Well is the Best Revenge. Still wish she would do an updated one. The meals are healthy, easy and appealing enough to forgo take-out -- definitely life-changing!

And last but not least, Bread Alone, which opened up a whole world to us. Until you work your way through those recipes, you don't really understand or appreciate bread; at least, that is what it meant for my husband and me. We learned so much about food through that book. It also opened up France and French food for me, which had never really intrigued me (at the time, Julia Child and French cuisine was passé and of little interest -- oh, how wrong I was!). We visited Basil's Le Moulin de la Vierge when in Paris, and so it began...

Next came Delia Smith's How To Cook series of coolbooks (3). Of course, I cockily assumed that since I could make a wedding cake, and easily cater parties single-handedly, that I knew how to cook. She taught me technique and humility, along with how to softly scramble eggs (perfectly). And hard boil an egg without overboiling it. And bake a perfect roast potato and how to roast, fry, grill, sautée and otherwise prepare meat (left out of my mostly vegetarian upbringing).

Oh, and I cannot forget Nigella. Who taught me to loosen up again, and just enjoy cooking. (she brought decadence back, with recipes for ham in coke, the.best.cheesecake.ever, and ginger bread pudding. swoon!).

I keep on the look-out for other life-changing cookbooks, because I know they are out there, and I am eager to find them.

*blinks a bit after reading MaryWynn's comment*

So, MaryWynn, DID you mention somewhere in there what your favorite cookbook was? I think I missed that somehow.

The Moosewood cookbooks were what did it for me, the first summer after college when I was living with two vegetarian friends about three blocks from NYC's biggest greenmarket.

Dear MaryWynn:

Gosh. I feel really bad that my comment made it seem like I was disparaging the midwest, specifically Wisconsin. I really don't feel that way: check out this post from last year as proof! My intention was to show where I was at personally and the 'awakening' experience I had after reading The Silver Palate Cookbook. Perhaps I muddled the picture with my midwest comment and apologize for any misunderstanding there.

After my 'epiphany', I did start attending the West Allis Farmers' Market, as well as the one in Madison. I joined the Outpost Co-op. I subscribed to a CSA, worked on the farm, held supper clubs with my neighbors and knew the Sprecher Brewery very well, as I lived right next door. (I was sad when they had to change that root beer formula, by the way.)

I'm really glad you highlighted all the wonderful things that are both happening now and have roots in Wisconsin history--all the incredible cheeses and organic farms and farmers' markets and especially Will Allen who is doing simply amazing things with his urban farm. He is one of my heros.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify my feelings about the food scene in Wisconsin--it really is an amazing place!

Dana

Dana, clearly you meant no harm, but my Midwestern hackles went up at "hinterlands."

My cookbook-soulmate is "Passionate Vegetarian" by Crescent Dragonwagon. She wrote from Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which is near where I grew up, and her recipes are a little bit hippie (see name), a lot gourmet, and she knows my home ground and all its delicious vegetables! There is no tomato like an Ozark tomato.

I'm a good ole "Joy of Cooking" kind of gal.

Way back in the early '80s, I moved into my first off-campus apartment in a college town in dusty West Texas and got my hands on a copy of Pierre Franey and Craig Claiborne's "The 60-Minute Gourmet." Honestly, I have to admit I bought it because i was being snobby and wanted to impress people with my sophistication (ow); but I read it cover to cover again and again and got hooked on cooking wonderful food and sharing it with friends, and I've never stopped.

After graduation, I packed a couple of suitcases, moved to New York, and kept cooking. I've amassed quite a collection of cookbooks over the years--Deborah Madison and Mark Bittman are favorites--but I still have my tattered copy of "60-Minute Gourmet," heavily annotated and held together with tape.

I'd have to say that Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone changed my life the most. I bought the book with a food-loving boyfriend at the time just as we were signing up for CSAs and adventurously cooking whatever came in the box that week. If we didn't know what to do something something, we'd joke around, saying "What would Debbie do?" and reference her fine book. The relationship has since ended, but the book is a mainstay!

Oh Dana V. and MaryWynn...

Oh how I miss Wisconsin and in particular Milwaukee. I too remember the West Allis farmer's market... my parents brought me there weekly even as a young child in the 60s. My parents were not gourmets or used fancy ingredients. We were lower-middle class but we ate very well. Nothing fancy (if it was Tuesday... it was roast chicken) but fresh greens and meat from the farm... just what we all strive for now.

I still have my Mom's Settlement Cook Book. I learned to cook using that book but the cookbook that started me on this lifelong passion was the original Silver Palate Cookbook. I learned so much from inserts among the recipes. I'll never get rid of either of them. The sauce-stained pages hold wonderful memories of places, times and of course... the people we love.

Cooking in Ten Minutes by Eric de Pomiane. A slim volume full of great varied menus you can indeed prepare in ten minutes.

Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking changed me forever. It made the idea of a dinner party in a tiny studio apartment seem not only possible, but like a fantastic idea.

Dana-

Nobody disses my foodways unchallenged, but Ok, I am appeased.

I too had an epiphany, which is one reason why I was curious about this post. I’m not usually an epiphany learner – I’m more of a muddler and muller – but it wasn’t from a cookbook.

I probably ate much like burrda2000, and I also have a copy of the Settlement Cookbook from my mom. Our table was governed by the seasons and my parents grew a lot of our food in a succession of small plots in community gardens. My mom’s particular culinary gift is redeeming the irredeemable piece of tough, gristly, bargain meat. It was simple stuff, and I learned simple techniques from my mom: leveling off, the difference between soft and stiff peak, how to use a meat thermometer. For us, homecooked food was mainly fuel, not pleasure. It was certainly not the transcendence it seems we seek from our tables now.

In college I spent some time living and learning in Ecuador, in the Andean sierra. The food there is not really that different from what I was used to, but it was impeccably fresh, and the family I stayed with cooked from the community market that doubled the population of the city I lived in on Saturdays. Everything was homemade, even the milk which was pasteurized on the stove after morning delivery. This felt familiar to me, I was content. I cooked with Martha (my “mom” in Ecuador), I got drunk and was young. Then I got on the plane back home.

They gave me a Hot-Pocket™ as our in-flight breakfast.

I spent the next six weeks getting sick every time I ate something my mom hadn’t made. It was the season of bounty (that you know and love) here, and it wasn’t long before I realized that if it has an ingredient I couldn’t pronounce, I was going to have an issue. I started reading labels and bringing lunches, I started to cook for myself.

Because of that experience, I learned the word “foodways.” I was forced to rethink my relationship to food: where it comes from and if I have met the person that grew it, how it’s handled and preserved, what it’s juiced up with. Why a pineapple here will never compare to one from a cart in Cuenca, or a tomato from the grocery chain to one from mom’s yard, why I would expect them to. My new curiosity led me to the northwest corner of our central library where the cookbooks live and I’ve loved them ever since, but I got there by way of Ecuador.

After a while my body adjusted back and I could eat Cheeto’s and grilled-cheeses again, but the lesson was indelible.

Thanks for the ups to Wisconsin, the Stallis Market (though Fondy is the market of my heart), and thanks for asking the question. I’m going to track down “the Silver Palate”. Sounds like good stuff.