I love a book with good pictures and a nice storyline- cookbooks included. This cookbook is beautiful enough to be a coffee table book...and Anya's blue and white apron is on my wish-list now. Home Cooked by Anya Fernald starts with the chef's back story and how she arrived at learning her great skills of cooking. She shares instructions on how to make stocks, can tomatoes and other building blocks for her other recipes. Then, she moves to the parts of a good meal- the starters, main courses and desserts. So far, I have made 4 of these wonderful recipes: the pound cake (YUMMMMM), the buttermilk biscuits, the cornmeal spoon bread and the blackened carrots. Her recipes are basic and call for minimal, high quality, hearty ingredients. Anya isn't afraid of butter, spices, lard, and old ways of preparing and storing her food. I am super picky about keeping cookbooks around. I have such limited storage space for cookbooks and often rely on a quick google search for something...