I'm not sure if this cookbook would fit your needs or not, but I LOVE "How to cook everything" by Mark Bittman. He has some other cookbooks too that are just as wonderful. In How to cook Everything, the recipes are from scratch, and I'm sure there's some complex ones, but plenty of them are simple too. Perpetual favorite. :)

How To COok Everything.

off to go check it out!
thanks!

hmmm, great minds think alike!

I love New Food Fast by Donna Hay (she also had one called Flavors which is organized by flavor instead of type of dish, so if you have fresh lemons (or whatever) you can see a bunch of things to do with them. I just got that one and haven't had the opportunity to use it yet.

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison has a ton of veggie recipes, and is organized by vegetable type, with tips on how to choose the best veggies and how to store them. From this book, I learned how to roast veggies, which can then be put into other dishes.

The Stinking Rose cookbook is all about garlic and has some yummy stuff.

Alice Waters just came out with a cookbook called The Art of Simple Food which would be a great place to learn the basics - she tells how to choose ingredients, how to make stocks, etc.

Also, I have to say I love my crock pot - throw in chili ingredients, give it a stir, and a few hours later you have chili without having to do much of anything (I know you said labor-intensive is ok but sometimes it's nice not to have to stand over a stove and still have home cooked food.) It's also great for making chicken stock.

Have fun! I love to cook, it's creative and nurturing and just plain awesome.

I love my Millennium Cookbook, named after the restaurant. It's mostly if not all vegetarian but super gourmet and fusiony fun... and all from-scratch stuff including really creative salad dressings. I also love the Moosewood Celebrates cookbook, which has recipes for many occasions around the calendar year and globe - lots of world foods of many varieties.

Seconded. I've cooked out of their other cookbook, The Artful Vegan and it's incredible. The one problem is that ingredients can be expensive, but the cookbook was totally inspiring for any number of future, less expensive, just as delicious meals.

I bought this book when a friend of mine went off to culinary school.
professional cooking

it covers all the basics of vegetables, meats, spices, broths and bases, and how they are all used. The book is full of recipes and good ideas for combining flavors and tastes. Only downside is that it bases the recipe measurements off weight and i dont have a kitchen scale.

(btw..its a REAL "make it from scratch" kind of book.)

This is the book I was telling you about a couple of weeks ago - my cooking instructor swore by it. It is used in a lot of cooking schools, and is definitely geared toward the 'professional' chef (hence the large measurements for the recipes cited above). But it covers ALL of the basics, everything from sanitation / safety, the different types of tools (and their proper use), how heat (and the various applications) affects different types of foods, to all of the different elements of cooking. For example, before you learn how to cook meat (roasting, baking, broiling, grilling, pan-broiling, sauteing, pan-frying, griddling, simmering, and braising), you have an entire chapter on "understanding" meat (composition, inspection / grading, various cuts and uses, handling, storage, etc).

It's huge but really, really good.

As you know, I am new to cooking, so I'm on expert - but this seems to be as basic / from scratch as you can get...

i loved this book on preserving from time/life
http://cgi.ebay.com/PRESERVING-COOKBOOK-Time-Life-GOOD-COOK-CANNING-Book_W0QQitemZ300085990121QQcmdZViewItem

i also loved all of m.f.k. fisher's books. she was just such a lover of life and appreciator of the senses, and food was one of the ways she expressed her life + views. some listed here: http://www.mfkfisher.com/
always from scratch :)

thanks!

Ana,
tassajara cooking is amazing. There are a list of books on amazon so I will send you the link and you can chose which looks most interesting.
I love many of the recipes and one of the gems I discovered in them was the tahini shortbread
here is the link to the books
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=blended&field-keywords=tassajara%20cooking&results-process=default&dispatch=search/ref=pd_sl_aw_tops-1_blended_14170704_2&results-process=default

Also I really like Molly Katzens cook books. She has a reasonable amount of every day type recipes and there is not a single one I have tried I haven't like
moosewood cookbook
enchanted broccoli forest
and her low fat recipes are good as well.
xo

I love the Cooks Illustrated books because they explain the science and chemistry behind why certain cooking methods work best. I use The New Best Recipe all the time.

And I high recommend Lidia's Family Table for all kinds of lovely basics for simple, delicious, nurishing meals.

Yay cooking! one of my favorite pastimes :))) Just wait until you're cooking with Lili. So much fun!

I have worked at all three Greek restauraunts in Charleston, and this is the one cookbook they all sell, from the Greek Church in town. It is the BEST, and lots of very made-from-scratch stuff. I use it a lot. It's really thick and cheap, too. It's well-renowned in our city, and has been around since 1957 or so. It has recipes, menus (and fasting menus), measurements, a glossary, and tips section. The sections in the index are appetizers, (every section has at least 20 recipes, pretty much, usually more) breads, cakes, candies, cookies, filo dough, koliva, lenten foods, meat and meat combinations, peta, pies, puddings, salads, salad dressings, sauces, seafood, soups, syrup pastries, vegetable and veggie combinations, yogurt. This book is SO GREAT. You MUST get it! Now I wish I hadn't gone shopping for lazy, pre-prepared food for this week...I want to Greek it up!
Here's the church's website where you can download an order form.
http://www.greekorthodoxchs.org/index.php?n=Main.Cookbook

Vegetarian Planet by Didi Emmons! It's been a really great "idea book" for me. And it's so big! I think my favorites so far have been the sweet-potato latkes and the fennel risotto. It's a catologue of "basic" global deliciousness, and I guess I also like it because her taste buds are similarly oriented to mine- things like lots of garlic, anise, and parsnips and fennel.

cafe brenda cookbook
http://www.amazon.com/Cafe-Brenda-Cookbook-Seafood-Vegetarian/dp/081664439X

and a beautiful bowl of soup - i've made almost every soup in it & they are all delicious

http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Bowl-Soup-Vegetarian-Recipes/dp/0811835286

both minnesota cookbooks :)