I have used this book time and time again, and not only for Christmas. The recipes are accurate, easy and great. The color photos really show how the recipes should look and they will! I have made more that a dozen different types of cookies from this book and each one was good if not great. The only problem I have with this book is that the ingredients are written into the directions. This makes it a little more time consuming when you are trying to get your recipes ready before the actual assemble and baking process. A minor set back for a really great book.

I've used this cookie book when making holiday cookies for family and friends for the last several years, and the results have always been a huge hit. Too often Christmas cookies look great but taste terrible - not something to worry about with this book. I particularly recommend the Cranberry-Cherry Pinwheels. They are delicious and surprisingly easy to prepare. However, be forwarned that most of the recipes in this book are also found in the new Joy of Cooking. Joy is great and much more comprehensive. I'd recommend taking a look at it before buying this book.

As the designated Christmas cookie baker in my family, I was given this book about three years ago. It's a wonderful resource for new ideas and rediscovering old favorites. I heartily recommend the snickerdoodles and the orange ginger wafers.

I am only a college student whose cooking skills are almost nonexistent, yet this particular book made me the chef of the day. The first thing I cooked out of this book was the cheese stuffed eggplant - at first I was terrified how it was going to come out, but the recipe was delicious, meat free (meat's expensive, so meat free is a great plus for a poor college kid), and with pictures to compare whether what I have made is actually what was supposed to be made. My roommates liked it very much, nobody complained, and I didn't blow up the kitchen or anything :).

I highly recommend it to anyone whose major concern is the ability to cook cheaply and effectively. Most of the recipes include things which can be stored for a couple of days prior to final preparation. It also includes a basic overview of dietary needs of a meat eater and vegetarians, explaining the alternatives for both. But the best thing about it, that since it is so beautiful and classy looking, it gives you confidence to cook and doesn't make you feel like a total moron in the kitchen.

Most households including mine had a copy of Joy of Cooking. It was quite a tome, but this selection of vegetarian recipes in Joy of Cooking: All About Vegetarian Cooking is contained in a slim volume, easy to handle in the kitchen, and with great color pictures. I think these recipes are all in the latest Joy of Cooking, but to have them all in one place, with pictures and tips for beginning chefs, is very useful. The book is priced to fit a student budget, but contains recipes which range from casual dining to fancy enough for entertaining friends. The recipes also include a variety of courses. A good summary of the variety of vegetarian diets is included in the beginning, as well as an alternate food pyramid for vegetarians. A section of Egg recipes is included, for those who eat eggs along with their vegetables. This is one of those cookbooks which you can just pick up and read, and it really lives up to its name, and should be a useful holiday present for anybody.

The first cookbook I ever used was a 1954 edition of Irma Rombauer's "The Joy of Cooking." The updated version of this classic is still one of my primary sources.

This new edition repackages the vegetarian recipes already contained in "The Joy of Cooking" into a useful smaller volume. The extras include shopping and cooking techniques and full color photos of many of the dishes. The photography is excellent, and will tempt you to drop everything and head for the kitchen.

The same "never-fail" standard of the original is preserved here. The recipes are well written, and include easy-to-locate ingredients. If you're a vegetarian and have been avoiding getting the original all-inclusive "Joy of Cooking" because you'll never use most of the recipes, then this is definitely the book for you. While a large number of the recipes are for ovo-lactos, there are a substantial number that are suitable for vegans as well.

And even if you're not vegetarian, you'll still find tempting treats in this volume.

This book has a great variety of classical and new salads. They all are not only delicious, but the recipies are well-written and thorough. The book also contains other cooking tips that help make your salads better. What a great resource for summer cooking.

Cooking in the summer is drag. It can make your whole house hot. I recently found a great new book I fell in love with. This book on salads and dressing is produced by the Joy of Cooking folks. So you know they will provide excellent recipes. I have always had a hard time creating salad dressings, and original salads. Guess what? This book does it will ease. This book is well organized, and easy to read. I love all of the extra tips and extra material that they add to the book. I hope you will enjoy this book as much as I have.

This book has the nicest page layout of photographs and recipes I've seen in a long time. It has recipes for simple things like different kinds of hot cocoa to cinnamon rolls, oatmeal, and tarts. The picture of the apple walnut muffins makes me salivate! This would make a great gift.

All About Grilling, is a refreshing book of new ideas for outdoor cooking and entertaining. I was very impressed with the different combinations of ingredients, the presentation of the meal, the grilled side dishes, and the rubs and sauces. I received the book as a gift and have enjoyed using it for my summer entertaining. I am now purchasing a book for a friend.

Finally a book on soups that feeds my passion for good soup recipes. This book contains a wide variety of soup/stew recipes. Not only does it contain american homestyle recipes, but it also contains other favorites such as egg drop soup, and other ethinic soups as well. This book is peppered with photos and illustrations that aide you in food preparation, as well as showing you what the final dish will look like. This book is enjoyable and worthwhile if you are a soup lover as I am. The book is very comprehensive, giving a wealth of good soup recipes, as well as pictures, and discussion of various soups, preparation methods and more. With this book you should be able to create some favorites of your own. I highly recommend this book to the soup lover in you.

Before the revised Joy of Cooking came out, I read an article describing one of the editors (I forget which--not Ethan) responding to the test kitchen's disappointment over the blandness of garlic chicken by saying that "well, maybe we can instruct people to mash the garlic into the chicken when they eat it." I've had cause to think back to that anecdote often. I've sampled probably about two dozen of these recipes, and it's been a real mixed bag: prime rib: fantastic; pork roast: dry; pie crust (and fillings): great (this section solved any of my previous pie difficulties: spaghetti carbonara: a complete disaster (I've made it twice: if you cook the entire mixture over medium heat, as instructed, your eggs will scramble repulsively); ditto for "classic meatloaf" (2/3 cup of ketchup + 1 cup of bread crumbs=mush); pancakes: excellent.

I think that these recipes are inconsistently and inadequately tested. I'm probably going to pick up a copy of Fanny Farmer and see how that goes. I do like having a big tome of a cookbook on hand, and this one is okay. Just make sure you try out these recipes yourself before you spring them on company.

(Another point, not content-related: my copy already looks like the heirloom editions of Joy of Cooking I see in my friend's houses: the binding has fallen off. Not too sturdy).

This review is for the spiral-bound edition.

I'll start with the written content: this cookbook is a complete guide not just for cooking, but for food as a whole. There are recipes for every conceivable type of consumable. Beverages (nonalcoholic and alcoholic), appetizers, snacks, candies, jellies, desserts, sauces/toppings, stuffings, and what goes in-between: simple entrees to full-blown multi-course dinners. The instructions are detailed and easy to understand. Unlike cookbooks that tell you to "cut into fillets and braise until done" or "serve with a piquant sauce," the directions take you through step-by-step, always explaining what is really meant. The ingredients range from items found in any supermarket to the more obscure near-alien things that will require serious searching, although most of the ingredients are quite reasonable. There are numerous illustrations throughout, finally letting mankind in on the secret of why some coffee cakes look like they were made from the inside out.

Not just recipes, either. This book includes detailed information on selecting, testing for/maintaining freshness, storing (including an entire chapter on freezing), preparing, and cutting the food. Different types of fruit are explained. Half a dozen pages are devoted to informing the reader about wine. Cuts of beef are explained here; JoC finally explains why chuck is chuck and tip is tip, and where they come from. Table decor, place settings, and appropriate wine glasses are explained too.

The writing style is joyful. Clearly, the authors do not just enjoy cooking, serving, and eating the food... they like talking about it, too. There is a gleeful sense of humor throughout, and anecdotes about where the food originated from and how it got its preposterous name. The contents of this cookbook are a treasure.

Now for the bad part: the physical book. Had the pages been printed on better quality paper, I would upgrade this poor excuse for a tome to galley status. The paper is clearly manga paper, almost (but not quite) as good as the quality of the phone book paper of your yellow pages, yet not quite as thick. The pages are transparent enough that you do not need to turn the flimsy page to see what is printed on the other side. The text size is small, the same size as the print of the listings in a phone book. The ink quality is atrocious; it's obvious that the photocopying machine used to crank out these pages was running out of toner, giving the book dark-text pages and fuzzy pale-text pages. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether the text is in bold print or if the toner cartridge went into its final death throe. The spiral spine is cheap plastic and does not allow easy page-turning. The quality of this (physical) book is absolutely ridiculous.

That's five stars for the content, one star for the physical book.

The Joy of Cooking is by now a classic, a Bible of cooking. An encyclopedic tome of procedures, material and recipes. I shall not attempt to cover its many virtues here, but instead I would like to focus on two reasons why you MUST get this book:

LEARNING TO COOK The Joy of Cooking is more than just a recipe book. It's a textbook. As a student, living on my own and having to take my first steps in the kitchen, this book was a life saver -- it taught me how to cook. Other cookbooks are mere collections of recipes: If you follow them carefully, you have a good chance at ending up with something close to what the author intended. But most cookbooks don't teach you anything about preparing food -- they're just recipes -- so you never really understand, for example, how different doughs are made and how they're used for different breads and pastries, or what kinds of fish should be broiled, fried or cooked, etc. The Joy of Cooking teaches you all that, and much more. If you take the time to actually read the descriptions at the start of each chapter, as opposed to just searching for and following a recipe, you will understand how to cook. The importance of this is immense: If you actually understand what your doing, as opposed to simply following directions, you can improvise, invent new recipes, correct any problems/mistakes/errors, etc. You will begin to think like a Chef. I own many cookbooks, but the Joy of Cooking is one of the very few that actually attempts (and does such a wonderful job) teaching you how to cook. You shouldn't miss up on this opportunity. It's very clear, very well-written, and is ideal for those that are taking their first steps in the kitchen.

RARE AND DIFFICULT TO FIND RECIPES While the Joy of Cooking can't contain each and every ethnic food, it is quite encyclopedic nonetheless. Often, I search dosens of cookbooks, surf the internet, ask friends, only to discover that what I'm looking for is already in the Joy of Cooking! I should have consulted it first! Do you realise that the Joy of Cooking will teach you how to make marshmellows, Halwa, Turkish pastry dough (for borekas), candy, and many other not-so-easy-to-find recipes? And all from scratch: Marshmellows are essentially whipped sugar syrup and gelatin. Halva is essentially sugar syrup and raw tehini sauce. Making Turkish pastry dough is an involved process that takes time and precision -- all the steps for which are in the Joy of Cooking. While I have all these recipes in other books as well, I have no other SINGLE book that contains them all. The Joy of Cooking is encyclopedic and diverse, its scope as far as procedures or ethnic foods are concerned is enormous. This should be your first cookbook, and unless you're looking for some really exotic procedures and recipes, it could very well be your only cookbook.

The folks that continue to bring us such consice and informative works over the years have done so again with this great wall calander. You'll find desserts,braekfasts,easy to make dinners and they even give low-fat a nod. Smart recipes,good taste combine for fully functional art.

Don't be misled ... this is not the timeless classic cookbook, "Joy of Cooking", despite the similar cover and overlap in authors. Rather, it's a different kind of classic - a classic period cookbook from the 1990s, very current when it was published then, now aging rapidly.

Want to invite guests over, 90s style? Look in this cookbook for recommendations: you'll find plenty of 90s food fads, and a 90s style penchant for menus that would be appropriate served anywhere but the dining room. Yes, in the 90s, you might well have made a big deal of making your own pizza for friends, as recommended by this book, or cooking and serving on the back porch because you couldn't afford a place with a kitchen yet. No need to get out your wedding china and silver for the holidays - this book doesn't tell you how to use it, anyway!

Me, I was looking for a more traditional cooking reference, one that wouldn't become dated as quickly, one with menu and table service recommendations for people who cook in the kitchen and eat in the dining room. Fortunately, the traditional Joy of Cooking is still in print - and will no doubt stay in print much longer than this period piece.

Countless times my husband and I have looked something up in the Joy of Cooking (or the J.O.C. as it is called in our home) that is conspicuously absent from other cookbooks (i.e. questions regarding shelf life of a honeydew, how long to cook a veal shank, proportion of oil to vinegar for a perfect vinaigrette, etc.) DO NOT SKIMP and get the mini-book, the trade paper, or the spiral bound version--hardcover is the only choice for this classic. I will admit that the selection of recipes may not be ideal for people with specific food needs or interests (such as vegetarians), however the amount of information contained in this "cook's bible" is timeless and essential. We may have forgotten who gave us our blender, but we BOTH remember the person who gave us the Joy of Cooking!

Having grown up in a cooking family and having my mom's dog-eared copy of the old Joy of Cooking always at my fingertips, I was skeptical of this updated version - until I tried it. This book has a recipe for virtually everything that up-to-date cooks want to make. From the trusty information on different types of produce, cuts of meat and cooking temperatures for poultry and pork to cooking methods and procedures to terrific recipes for grilled swordfish tacos with a corn-cherry tomato salsa, a cinnamon cream-cheese strata that kids go ape over for brunch, a perfect (and easy) way to make a homemade fruit cup, braised lamb shanks, the best fried rice I've ever made, etc. etc. This is a great book for people who are learning to cook (ALWAYS read the entire recipe through before you begin!) or people who already know how to cook and just want new ideas or a refresher for the basic ingredients for an old stand-by. I highly recommend it.

STAND FACING THE STOVE, is a robust volume (475 pages)detailing the life and work of Irma Rombauer and Marion Robauer Becker, the mother-daughter team responsible for writing the JOY OF COOKING, America's best-loved recipe and cookery reference book. STAND FACING THE STOVE will change your way of viewing cookbooks and the publishing process forever. The book took a decade to write, and author, Anne Mendelson, has done a thorough job of tracing the complex history of the writers' families, and JOY's life from it's inception in the early 1930's through the mid-'70's when daughter, Marion, dies. Presented is a fascinating insider's look at the culinary fads and trends that have defined our eating habits through four decades. JOY, which has sold over 10 million copies in its long and enduring history, was far less than joyous for the Rombauer clan than the ebullient light-hearted tone of the cookbook would belie. There were rancorous feuds with JOY's former publisher, the now-defunct Bobbs-Merrill Company. As a cookbook and recipe collector (WRITE ME!), I found Mendelson's book fascinating, but so complexly verbalized that it demanded being red in short fits and spurts. The book does provide valuable insights into the lives of the writers, their "magnum opus," and the terrible tension that existed between the publisher's self-interests, and the writers' unrelenting quest for ever more perfect expressions of their work. Sadly, Bobbs-Merrill refused to allow Mendelson access to the correspondence and records that would have shed even greater light on their publisher feud that fueled a long and embittered battle. At the close of the book, I found myself with a deep respect, not only for the Rombauers with their unrelenting tenacity at this enterprise, but also for Anne Mendelson whose depth and attention to detail resulted in huge and rich trove that enlightens the "culture of cookery." For reference, I wish the author had provided readers with pictures of the prominent versions of the ! Rombauer's volumes, especially the earliest editions. Instead, I suggest readers pull out their old, grease-spattered JOY OF COOKING, and have on hand a copy of the huge 1997 version(1136 pgs., Henry Holt, publishers) of the book from grandson Ethan for the fun of comparing copyrights, acknowledgements, and recipe updates which help to enrich the saga. (P.S. Those of you with 1930 editions of JOY, hang on to your hats! Some are worth over $1,000 now!)

The Joy Of Cooking was my first cookbook given to me by my mother. And reading the recipe as it were, as how it all came about is quite compelling.

Take one family--the St. Louis Rombauers--from good German stock. Add a 1931 vanity printing of Mrs. Rombauer's mostly unexceptional recipes: molded fruit salads, Kitchen Bouquet-colored gravies, things involving canned soup. Watch this collection rise into a successful commercial volume, leavened by its idiosyncratic voice (comparing a "vegetable plate, unadorned" to Gandhi's bald head, the amateur chef recommended a sprig of parsley). Throw in a contentious author-publisher relationship, plus daughter Marion Rombauer Becker's reluctant inheritance of her mother's legacy, and a delicious story forms.

Mendelson, who writes for Gourmet, discusses this most definitively American kitchen manual with measured but contagious relish. Like The Joy of Cooking, her closely researched work will be many things to many people. It's publishing history, intimate biography, and a record of changing national tastes--a practically foolproof repast.

Anne Mendelson gave a very descriptive account of life in St. Louis. She loves large words and uses them correctly, but it could have been a shorter book with less words