What's your favorite cookbook?

Somehow I've become a collector of cookbooks. I'm not sure how this happened.

One day a long time ago I bought a cookbook. A few months later I saw another one I liked and I bought that, and then a few months later I saw another one that looked interesting so I had to buy that one too. Cut to the other day when I realized that I must own about 50 cookbooks. Not to mention the tons of cooking magazines I've somehow accumulated. There's no way I'll cook all of the food in The Joy of Cooking or The Fannie Farmer Cookbook or The New York Times Cookbook any of the books from the folks at America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Country(my two favorite cooking shows) and Cook's Illustratedmagazine. Before I reach Hoarders territory I should probably stop, but I know another cool-sounding tome is just around the corner and I'll have to have it.

My favorite cookbook? That's easy: Peg Bracken's guide from 1960, The I Hate To Cook Book. She was sort of the Sandra Lee of her day, mixing homemade touches with store-bought ingredients while still coming up with great meals. But first and foremost Bracken was a writer -a brilliant writer — an essayist — and she brings great humor to the recipes (she also worked with Homer Groening, father of Simpsons creator Matt Groening, on a comic strip in the '50s). All of her books are well worth tracking down if you can (most of them are out of print), but if you like to cook, I'd start with The I Hate To Cook Book, which was reissued in a terrific 50th anniversary hardcover edition by her daughter, Johanna, a couple of years ago.

Is there a cookbook you always return to again and again? One that's probably dog-eared and has food stains on it because you open it so much?

You can find Bob Sassone on Twitter and at his personal site.