Regain Your Inspiration to Cook: 5 Cookbooks For Bringing Out Your Inner Chef

I don't know where I would be without by library of beautiful cookbooks. I treasure them and like an addict, I am constantly adding more books to the library. Often times I don't use the exact recipe but rather, I use them for inspiration. I'll often adjust recipes according to what's growing and what I currently have on hand. I also know from experience the frustration felt when you do precisely follow a recipe and it turns out wrong. It's not necessarily because you made a mistake, but rather, because the recipe just didn't work. But some cookbooks are marvelous. The recipes come out beautifully and the ideas are innovative. My collection of cookbooks often times serves as my library of new ideas and techniques if I'm running short.

And cooking does have a huge impact on the planet. I wrote over at TreeHugger last week that There's No Need For Revolution, Just Get Back In the Kitchen. One of the most pertinent reasons to learn to cook is the fact that you can control your own ingredients. The menu with the most vegetarian and vegan options is always your own. And if you choose to eat meat you can control your serving sizes as well as buying free range, grass fed, and organic products.

Keep reading to discover how to Regain Your Cooking Inspiration.

1. Super Natural Cooking, Heidi Swanson

Heidi Swanson is my hero. Her cookbook, Super Natural Cooking as well as her blog 101 Cookbooks is your gateway to wonderful whole foods cooking. She replaces all purpose flour with amaranth, barley, oat, and corn flours. She makes visually stunning mostly vegetarian recipes with complex flavors. She provides the reader with the tools to move forward without her with ideas of how to stock the pantry. My favorite recipes are the granola and the muhammara.

2. How to Cook Everything, Mark Bittman

Mark Bittman revolutionized cooking with his collection of incredibly simple recipes that work. He's published many more cookbooks since this one, and you likely know him from his New York Times column but this is still one of my favorites. If you're not sure how to clean mussels, you'll find it here. If your crab cakes always fall apart, he's got your answer. My version is burnt, water stained, and ripped but I still treasure it.

3. Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook, Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Whether you're looking to cut out the meat once in a while or everyday, this is a great resource. It provides recipes that are easy to put together, but at the same time aren't what I like to refer to as messipes. This means the recipes instead of being a mess come out looking like a dish that you would spend $25 on at a high-end vegetarian restaurant.

4. Chocolate & Zucchini: Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen, Clotilde Dusoulier

Her blog Chocolate and Zucchini exploded on to the scene in 2003 and there's a good reason for it. Her cookbook is minimal, modern, natural, often organic, and downright beautiful. It's a modern take on Parisian foods with a rustic edge. And just like the title of the book, it's a gastronomical adventure.

5. Home Creamery, Kathy Farrell Kingsley

This is a great little book for the eco-chef that likes to learn to make everything from stratch like cheeses, butter, yogurt, and other dairy products. This, like making my own bread, has gotten to be a hobby of mine this year and this book has helped me along the way.