Tried and true comfort food from the farmhouse kitchen, and the cookbook that turns a weeknight into something people remember. Hundreds of easy to follow dinner recipes, breads, sides and desserts, peppered with photographs and the anecdotes that go with them. The publisher calls it as collectible as it is useful, and that is exactly the right description: it looks like a keepsake and cooks like a workhorse.

Frances Gillette wrote it from a small farm in Yacolt, Washington, in sight of Mount St. Helens, and the color photographs that fill the pages edge to edge were taken by her granddaughter, Gabrielle Massie. She was working full time as a registered nurse while she cooked her way through it. Several of the recipes are carried over from Tastes of Country, her earlier book, which sold through four printings and has been out of print for years.

208 pages in a generous 8.5 by 11 inch paperback. Give it to someone setting up a first kitchen, or to the cook in the family who already owns everything and still wants the gravy to come out right.