I Heart Cookbooks

What a great weekend! No plans and nowhere to drive. It was good and it went way too quickly.
We just piddled around the house this weekend and we went to Tulsa late yesterday. Eric wanted to look at trucks and I wanted to run into Barnes and Noble. I was on a mission to get two cookbooks.
Ever since the Real Housewives of New Jersey episode where Teresa is canning the tomatos I wanted her cookbook. It's called Skinny Italian and it's SO good! There are a ton of recipes in there that I am dying to try! Plus it has lots of personal stories that are pretty funny!
The other cookbook I wanted was the new Trisha Yearwood one Home Cooking With Trisha Yearwood. I LOVED her first one, Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen, so much that as soon as I saw she had another one out I HAD to get it! It has some super yummy recipes in it as well and I can't wait to read through it tomorrow when I am all alone! ;) As a matter of fact the peach cobbler I made tonight for dessert is from her first cookbook. It's really hard to find a cookbook with good, basic recipes in it. I hate cookbooks that try to get all fancy and add crazy ingredients to regular dishes.
I have a ton of cookbooks and there are only a very small handful that I actually use. Another of my favorites is The Pioneer Woman Cooks. If you blog (are from Oklahoma or watch TV) you know who Ree Drummond AKA The Pioneer Woman is. If not you are truly missing out. She writes my all time favorite blog and is the funniest person ever. (Well of course she is! She's from Oklahoma! Haha!) She has a section on her blog of recipes and they are SO good! If you have never visited her site you have to NOW!
I love cookbooks because I cook every night that we are home. It's much quicker than driving into town and we have started to think what I cook is better than just about anywhere we can eat out. In our area the restaurants are limited. We do have a great pizza place in Tahlequah, but just about the only place we will eat in Muskogee is Rib Crib. So obviously I cook quite a bit!
To spice things up I've kind of made a little challenge for myself to try a new recipe at least every other week. You have to know that Eric is pretty picky so it's tricky for me to try new things. Brodey's motto is "you don't know you like it 'til you try it" so he's much more fun to cook for. He will try just about anything! Last night he was eating sushi with the little chopsticks the waitress put together with rubberbands! LOL
Tonight for dinner we had chicken and mushrooms. It's one of the first meals I ever started cooking. It's so easy and quick. I'm going to post that recipe either tonight or in the morning if you want to try it out yourself! I'll also post the peach cobbler recipe from Trisha Yearwood's cookbook soon! It's super yummy!
Well I hope you had a wonderful weekend!
Ready or not here comes Monday!
LUV APRIL :)

Oh P.S. The layout above is a layout I did about my Granny's mixing bowls. It was in the May/June 2010 issue of Creating Keepsakes! If you click on it you can view it larger!