I like a lot of the Real Simple recipes, especially holiday stuff.

I started collecting my favorite cookie recipes a long time ago, and then started a recipe binder. I like my baking books -- Nigella's and the Magnolia Cafe one Perkins got me -- for browsing and reading, but everything else I'd rather have written up or printed off.

I don't web-source many recipes, because I don't trust them. And I don't have the energy to experiment--that's exhausting. Going to one source (like Bittman or the Cake Bible) I find much easier.

When I last had my fit of "proper" cooking, it was all CI all the time, and it was delish. But the "dragging" of the laptop into the kitchen got a bit tedious. Still, I do have a tablet now. I do refuse to do much more printing. I have a binder, and it is mostly clippings.

I don't web-source many recipes, because I don't trust them.

I rely pretty heavily on the epicurious reviews. If I'm not sure how something will turn out, and there's no reviews, I don't make it. I just made a squash chili [link] that I was skeptical of, but it had enough reviews, and even with tons of substitutions, turned out great.

I do a lot of cooking from the Epicurious app on my iPad - if I stick with the Gourmet sourced recipes, they're very trustworthy.

And for baking, I trust Smitten Kitchen absolutely. She has never steered me wrong.

Well, the bank thing?

Turns out that in advance of putting in the new system the bank sent me a new debit/visa card which I should have but somehow managed to not see. I'm sure it's at home.

I hope it is and that I can find it in the chaos.

I dont recall my mom ever having any cookbooks when I was growing up. She was an awful cook which is probably not a coincidence.

She's probably the only mother who ever tried to learn her DiL's recipes.

ita, our family has never had a port-a-cath, but both kids had central lines placed. Grace's trach brings up similar issues around infection, but since it isn't directly into blood stream it's also different. In clinical settings people do the double glove thing (glove from box plus the sterile glove from the suction catheter kit), but we don't and when RTs come in to deal with Grace they do both double gowning + double gloves + mask and often glasses. But she's listed as MRSA colonized.

I wear gloves when suctioning, though K rarely does. Our previous nurse rarely did but our new nurse does. The whole outfitting is probably better, especially clinically, but we are lazy.

I grew up with the 60s-era Joy of Cooking. Like Jessica, I can't fathom a kitchen without it.

When I was in law school, and for a few years afterwards, I did a lot of cooking out of the Moosewood Cookbook (the revised edition with less butter).

Now I'm a Mark Bittman gal, with forays into The Best Recipe by CI. I go to CI for baking and Bittman for entrees. Although the devil's food cake I just put into the oven is from The New Basics.

And of course I have a recipe box full of stuff cut out from the newspaper (like that apple cake a bunch of Buffistas have eaten), or written down from websites or friends. I still have the handwritten paper with the recipe for Mrs. Smith's Congo Bars I got from my best friend's mother when I was 8...

I like a lot of the Real Simple recipes

Oh, yes! My newish go-to "looks fancy, tastes great" party dessert is their Chocolate Stout Bundt Cake. It's FANTASTIC.

Cookbooks are for reading or for reference. For actual cooking my two primary sources are old Eating Well magazines - I've never had a recipe from them not turn out great - or web searches. I usually google and take a look at three or four similar things and then wing it from there.