I love the Food and Wine Best of the Best Cookbooks as a great jumping off point. They come out annually and have recipes from a number of that years best cookbooks. If I really like what I try, I go on eBay and try to find a used copy of the whole book.

Other than that series, lately I've been cooking out of these:

Zov (a local Mediteranean restaurant in So Cal) -- her roast chicken is to die for

The Food and Flavors of Haute Provence - Georgeanne Brennan (first from the Best of... book above) -- lamb chops with a goat cheese, white wine and rosemary sauce

And I love the Ina Garten books -- great salads, roasted broccoli.

Edited to add favorite recipes

This post was edited by 1929Spanish on Sun, Apr 6, 14 at 11:28

the tomato sauce in the Top 100 pasta sauces is my "go to" as well.

1929Spanish, we're having company tonight so I looked up Zov, and I'm going to use her famous spice blend on roast chicken!

As for me, the mulligatawny and brownies cockaigne in Joy of cooking, the coffee butter crunch pie in Maida Heatter, the lemon tart filling from cook's illustrated, lasagne bel monte from a 40-year old Sunset cooktop, and ceasar salad from. Sunset "favorite salads" are some of my favorites. This also illustrates why I don't buy many cookbooks anymore, and rely on the internet instead.

I tend to rely on the Internet as well for recipes. I often type the ingredients that I want to use into a cooking web site such as Allrecipes and find a recipe that will work. If the recipe turns out well, I print it off and put it in a three ring binder that has become my personal cookbook..

The joy of cooking and allrecipes are my go to resources.

I have gotten rid of most of my cookbooks for the same reason- I only used one or two recipes. Not that other recipes weren't "good" they just didnt fit well with my family, my lifestyle, my pantry, etc... I scanned the 'keepers' and donated the books to a used book sale.
Many of my keepers are from a Moosewood cookbook- My family loves Light Vegetable Chowder, & Pecan Crusted Fish. I have several favorites from magazines/websites Cooking Light- Beef Daube comes to mind, New Orleans Cuisine Red Beans and Rice gets made a couple times a month. Serious Eats- Halal Cart Chicken is amazing. And I love Mark Bittman.
I frequently take cookbooks out of the library. My library gets many new ones each month.

SJ - if you haven't had a chance to eat there, you should. Your guests are glint to think they died and went to heaven.

The joy of cooking, especially pork tenderloin and chop recipes (pp 695-99), and baked chicken with oj (p586), and any pan sauce. Funny, i had the book for 20yeqrs before I started using it. I was afraid of it! Now it is my bible, with the sections on choosing, storing, and prepping everything. And there are easy, quick meals in there, too.

I wish more cookbooks included serving suggestions, like sides that go well.

I also used to subscribe to a menu planning service, and still have all the weekly menus (with shopping lists and recipes). Every Wednesday I pull out a weekly menu and go to the store. I'm always happy to see recipes I've made several times that were hits, and even the former misses I now know how to modify for my family. Sometimes I'll just them through looking for "triple smileys", and since I'm moderately staple-stocked, can usually throw something together unplanned.

The one cookbook I tend to use a lot is Food to Live By by Myra Goodman (the founder of Earthbound Farm). I especially like the Mexican Meatball Soup, the Mediterranean Lentil Soup, merlot-braised short ribs, the flank steak, Swiss chard with raisins and pine nuts, potatoes gratin, carrot cake, harvest pie.

For everything else, the internet is my go-to source especially when I am looking to use up ingredients I have on hand.

I have a number of cookbooks, but also tend to use the internet as my go-to resource. Epicurious and allrecipes are my current favorites, although there are other sites that I like as well. I have a file folder on my hard drive and a 3 ring binder in the kitchen with a lot of my favorite recipes. When I come across an interesting recipe on the internet (eg the Zov spice blend), I bookmark them and save them in a folder called "recipes to try". From there, they get moved or deleted!

I never was a terrifically enthusiastic cook, but I do like to eat well from my own cooking. I have an old copy of the Fannie Farmer cookbook and an old McCalls book, and those are my go-to for anything classic -- especially baking. I also have a Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook and one from the synagogue in my hometown. I search the internet for ethnic recipes. One source that I like for recipes is the Cottage Smallholder blog (not active now, but still accessible) which is where I learned how to make membrillo.

Good recipes are where you find them. :) Most of my mentions below (which I won't edit out in case they're of interest to anyone) are for baking and the cooking ones are for a specific method or flavor. I realized in thinking about this, that most of my cooking is what I learned at home. Another great learning experience, however, was cooking through a bunch of recipes that I was editing, and needed to photograph, for a newsletter. Many were things I wouldn't have otherwise made, most were decent to good, if not great, and inviting people to lunch, regularly, to eat the results made for great socializing. Think Julie and Julia, without the drama. :) So I'd suggest you go through the books you have and make every recipe that has ingredients you like and see what you get. :)

I don't make a lot of recipes from cookbooks, but I will use them as guides. I have dozens, and like to read through them for inspiration. When I was trying to raise my game with braises, which I love because they're inexpensive and you just throw everything in a pot, I made a few from All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking by Molly Stevens. The duck legs with sour cherries is worth the price of the book. :) But it's a lot of doing stuff for a braise, and I haven't made it again. Recently, I was given Plenty by Yoram Ottolenghi and it's fabulous, but I haven't made anything from it yet.

I also use recipes from the 'net. I like finding ones that have a lot of comments. That's better than lab testing! I have many baking specific cookbooks and couldn't find a good recipe for plain chocolate cake. I wanted it to make cake with an 8-year-old, so I wanted a plain old cake, and not a mix. I could have invented a chocolate pound cake, but I finally found this on Add A Pinch blog. It really is that good, and we made it (twice) without the secret ingredient (espresso powder), and it was still that good (I used Valrhona cocoa). The best bundt cake recipe I ever made was also from a blog, which is gone now. It had a perfect crumb and was truly delicious. My most popular cake is a pumpkin chocolate marble bundt from Sunset magazine. The linked fig pie is also a big hit.

The Black Family Reunion Cookbook from the NCNW (which is a from the store, bound volume) is another favorite, with all kinds of different recipes for cornpone and corn muffins, my favorite Passover green vegetable kugel is from a local congregation cookbook, and the "family" matzah ball recipe originated with one put out by the local Hadassah.

When I make bread pudding, I refer to the recipe in It's All American Food by David Rosengarten, but I don't make precisely that. I do make the arroz con pollo as directed (more or less--it's my mother's recipe (her book, that is) and I think there are some changes she's made over the years) from The Spice Cookbook by Stuckey, Day and Spier from the 1960's.

What I'm trying to say is having a favorite recipe from whatever source, is normal. Don't think of it as underutilizing your cookbooks. Think of it as cherishing the best they have to offer. :)