Some women, it is said, like to cook.
This book is not for them.

This is how The I Hate To Cook Book starts out. The cookbook, first published in 1960 (a 50th anniversary edition of the cookbook is being released in just a few months), has been a hit with home cooks ever since. The cookbook does contain more than 180 recipes, but its biggest selling point is that it is witty and fun to read, with a fantastic tone that will make you want to read every recipe just to hear what author Peg Bracken has to say. It reminds you that it is ok to have realistic goals in the kitchen - such as getting through dinner with a minimum amount of work, or finding to easiest possible dish to bring to a potluck - rather than needing to aspire to be the next Martha Stewart with every dish that you make.

The book has 13 chapters, with the last two covering household and kitchen tips rather than adding too many more recipes. The chapters have titles like “Company’s Coming, or Your Back’s to the Wall” and “Desserts, or People Are Too Fat Anyway.” The recipes are very detailed with the sort of instructions that will make sense to even a non cook, such as “cook until it’s the color of a nice camel’s hair coat” can easily follow. Don’t be fooled by all the joking in the book, however: Peg Bracken was a good cook (whether she wanted to be or not!) and these are good recipes.

Since this is an older cookbook, some of the recipes are a bit outdated, but most are just as current as those you’ll find in any other all purpose cookbook. There are no full-color pictures (at least not in my 1960 edition) to show you want the recipes should look like. It has plenty of lovely pen and ink illustrations by Hillary Knight that will make you smile as you go through the chapters.

I don’t know about you, but I recently realized that I have quite the cookbook collection going on here. Unlike stamps or trading cards, people rarely start out to build a cookbook collection. Instead, they grow over time as you add a book here and there, take up a new type of cooking or baking, or browse through used bookstores until you find an old, forgotten gem. Like stamps and trading cards, however, everything that you can collect has some value attached to it. I flipped through a copy of the Antique Trader Collectible Cookbooks Price Guide to see if my out of control collection of cookbooks had any value besides their wealth of recipes.

It turns out that some of my oldest cookbooks, while they’ve risen from their sticker price or $2 of $4, aren’t worth all that much. Many of my newest cookbooks have sticker prices (and current values) much higher! My theory is that cookbooks are things that are kept for years, and passed along to friends and relatives. They’re not often sold, lost or destroyed (although spills in the kitchen will damage more than a few). So while my 1960 copy of Peg Bracken’s The I Hate To Cook Book is worth a lot to me, it’s not worth a whole lot on the market because there are plenty of other copies out there.

Most of the cookbooks listed in the Price Guide topped out at $20-$40, even for the very old cookbooks or small-run promotional books. Needless to say, I’m keeping my books for their content and for inspiration even when I don’t use their recipes. Does anyone else have older cookbooks that might be worth more than their recipes? Anyone else have older cookbooks, like me, that you couldn’t put a price tag on easily because the recipes are worth even more?

I find that it is very easy to remember a good dessert, but some desserts truly stick in your mind as something special. The cookbook Unforgettable Desserts certainly hopes to put each of its 150 recipes into this category, and offers a wide range of recipes, from very simple to complex showstoppers, to bakers to try. What you end up trying in your own kitchen and what you end up remembering is, of course, up to you, but there is no shortage of ideas in this book.

The cookbook starts out with a chapter full of basic recipes. From pie crusts to puff pastry, these are recipes that you’ll use over and over with the recipes in this book and with others. Ingredients and equipment are also touched on in an introductory chapter before getting into the recipes. The recipes are well written and easy to follow, and there are notes with tips on baking each specific recipe to help answer any questions that might come up while you work. I like the fact that many of the recipes have a twist that makes them stand out (hence the unforgettable name!), such as oatmeal cookies that sandwich a bright purple blueberry ice cream. That isn’t a dessert that you’ll easily forget.

The only drawback here is for photo fans, since not every recipe in the book comes accompanied by a photograph. This isn’t a problem for some of the cookies and things, but might make you shy away from trying the more involved cake recipes if you are the type who prefers to know what the finished product should look like, or wants some visual assistance when putting all the components of a dessert together. Still, a well-written recipe will get you through the process and if you just have a little extra confidence (and are willing to take a chance on decorating without a guide), you’ll do just fine here.

Food allergies can range in intensity from mildly annoying to deadly serious. They can force strict limits on what an allergy sufferer can, and cannot cook - which is especially tough if you’re used to whipping up a favorite batch of peanut butter cookies before your child is diagnosed with a peanut allergy, or you’re diagnosed with a wheat allergy. Allergy-Free Desserts: Gluten-free, Dairy-free, Egg-free,Soy-free and Nut-free Delights is a cookbook that provides plenty of tasty baked goods and desserts that look and taste like the “real thing” but should fit the diets of many food allergy sufferers, allowing you to create all kinds of homemade goodies with no worries about what the reaction to them will be.

Allergy-free baking requires that you make quite a few ingredient substitutions, so the book starts off with an introduction to some of the ingredients you’ll find called for in the book, what they’re used for and what they taste like. All the guess work in using these ingredients has been taken out of thee equation when you’re working with the book, but in addition to being able to bake the included recipes, you’ll also get a sense of how to better use these things to adapt other favorite recipes.

The recipes in the book are friendly and easy to follow along with. The ingredient lists are short, despite the inclusion of some ingredients that you might not recognize right off the bat, and so are the instructions, which read just like those of a “regular” recipe. There are many photos of the finished products to inspire you and keep you on the right track as you work. You’ll find recipes for cookies, bar cookies, quick breads, cakes and candies. You can preview a few right on Amazon’s website, too, including Pretend Peanut Butter Cookies and Cool Mint Patties.

Irish food is much more than stews and soda breads, although they are some of the dishes that first come to mind when thinking about Irish cuisine. Irish Puddings, Tarts, Crumbles, and Fools is dedicated to the desserts of Ireland, and there certainly are a lot of good looking desserts in this book.

The book is divided up into six chapters by recipe type: Puddings, Tarts, Crisps & Crumbles, Fools & Flummeries, Tea Breads & Cakes, and Christmas treats. Each of these chapters starts off with a little introduction to the recipe type, why the recipes are popular and what types of recipes - and ingredients - you can expect to find in each category. The descriptions get even more specific when you turn to the individual recipes, as each is accompanied by a paragraph describing some of the history of the recipe or baking tips for it. The recipes are simply written and easy to follow. Many include a number of variations that will enable you to experiment with the recipe to suit your own tastes. There are plenty of beautiful pictures to inspire you to get into the kitchen, as well.

All the recipes call for Kerrygold Irish butter. Irish butter is European-style butter, which has a higher butterfat than your average American butter, so it tastes slightly creamier. It also has a very slight tang of cheese or buttermilk to it, which makes it taste richer. You can find it at some markets and at specialty stores, but you can also simply substitute regular butter into all of these recipes if you can’t find it. For me, while I like to use it in baking, I like it even more on toast (perhaps on Soda Bread!) and end up using it for that and run out before I use it strictly for baking.

Mardi Gras starts this week and, if you’re not headed down to the Big Easy yourself, what better way to celebrate than with some New Orleans-style desserts? DamGoodSweet: Desserts to Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth, New Orleans Style is the perfect book to put you on the right track, with a collection of tasty recipes that you don’t have to take a trip to Louisiana to enjoy.

The book starts right off with classic N’awlins favorites, including a buttermilk beignet recipe. These light, crisp , bite-sized donuts are synonymous with the Cafe du Monde, a New Orleans cafe where they are a signature treat, and are so popular that they may as well be synonymous with the name of the city itself. All of the recipes are thoroughly written out and are easy to follow along with. There are plenty of photos in the book to give you an idea of what you’re finished result should look like - and to tempt you in to trying all kinds of dishes.

One of the nicest features of the book is the way that every recipe is accompanied by a story of what makes this recipe so popular, or such a signature dish for the area. There are also asides that talk about some of the city’s most famous culinary hot-spots (at least where sweets are concerned!), such as the Cafe du Monde and McKenzie’s Pastry Shoppe. Many of the stories include personal anecdotes from the author, a pastry chef who grew up in the Big Easy. His easy writing style makes the book fun to read, as well as to cook from.  These types of stories really help you connect with the food culture of the area a little bit and, by the time you’re done with the book, you’ll probably feel pretty enthusiastic about the area and its food - and you might even feel like taking a little trip out there to try it for yourself.