Kitchen Geeks

[Rae]

My official Life-Changing Cookbook ™ is Vegetables Every Day, by Jack Bishop. Highly recommended, especially for less confident cooks (read: me).

[Josh]

I did dig Alton Brown's cook books, though I rarely used the recipes, I just liked better understanding cooking, because it's not intuitive to me. I don't have access to them anymore- purchased them for a now gone girlfriend.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2012/...nch-toast/ made that for dinner tonight after doing the prep work yesterday. Had to screw around with the recipe- only had 7 eggs, removed the topping, used skim milk instead of whole milk and cream. still turned out very well, and wasn't quiiiiiite so sugar bombtastic. still quite sweet. I put blackberries on top, but that's what I had. Also, I eat french toast for dinner.

I'm trying to expand my go to recipe store. I've been looking at blogs some. I like this one so far: http://budgetbytes.blogspot.com/ as well as a slow cooker one linked on there. any cooking blog suggestions from the crowd?

[Rae]

For anyone who uses a lot of online recipes - I can't recommend Evernote highly enough. Best way I've found to organize recipes I've found online.

[MoustachePants]

Easy Peasy Cheese Sauce for anything:

Prep Time: 5 Minutes
Cook Time ~1 hour +

Ingredients:
~2 pounds cheese (For a basic sauce I use Cheddar which is cheap and melts best but you can use Jack, Colby, Mozzarella, Provolone, come the demon Etrigan as long as it has some elasticity to it, ie. feta is too crumbly to be the base so you can use some but you need something stickier as well)
5 cups Milk
1 cup sour cream (optional makes it a whole lot richer and creamier)
2 cups butter (salted or unsalted)
1 cup flour
Pepper to taste
(Any other spices you'd want to try, I use cayenne pepper and salt if the butter is unsalted)

Over low heat melt the butter in a large pot and SLOWLY add the flour (approximately 2 tbsps at a time) and whisk together until smooth, keeping the mixture from burning. Don't add all the flour as it will be too dry, go until the mix is just at a thick paste and put the rest off to the side. Begin to add the milk, about a cup at a time, and mix the rue (butter and flour mixture) until it is combined throughly. If you dont get all the clumps out the flour will burn, so whisk vigorously. Keep adding milk slowly and whisking, adding the sour cream, again whisking until smooth. Let this mixture cook on low heat, whisking occasionally (make sure there are no clumps on the bottom of the pot by running the whisk on the bottom), until it thickens. Add more flour SLOWLY if you think it isn't thick enough, but remember the cheese will help it thicken as well. Thrown chunks of the cheese and allow to melt, mixing occasionally, until fully combined.

This is your basic cheese sauce that you can pour over mac and bake at 350 for 45 minutes to make homemade mac and cheese, or add peppers and salsa to to make salsa con queso, or beer and make beer cheese (Let a good portion of the beer evaporate off on low heat if you do this after the basic sauce is cooked). You'll end up with a delicious, easy cheese that you can put on almost anything or cook into almost anything.

Pictures here

And here