Do you prefer cookbooks with colorful meal pictures and sometimes showing a picture of the ingredients as well or just the wordy kind with very few pictures?

To me it doesn't matter - pictures are nice to look at but it doesn't necessarily mean that the recipes are any good. I judge all cookbooks by the recipes - not the pictures. Some of my best cookbooks have no/very little pictures in them. What good is a picture when the recipe is no good?

Erm... how do you tell if a recipe is good by just looking at the ingredients?

Brought up in the kitchen, cooking for over 50 years, come from a long line of chefs, pastry chefs, cooks; ran restaurants, delis and catering businesses - it's in my blood. I can also spot the errors in cookbooks and magazines in their recipes. Can't explain it - it's a natural thing.

Heh! The expert spoke

I have a food "dictionary" which is useful for referencing ingredients used in Western cooking, but I have not come across a food dictionary for Chinese cooking, so sometimes I do not know in what form the ingredient is sold as.

So, for me, as a 3-year old cook, I usually go for cookbooks with pictures and better still, if they sometimes have pictures of the ingredients.