The best five cookbooks ever
In the early 70s, I abandoned my career as a printer/real-estate-broker/financial-planner/securities-dealer/and-I-forget-what-else to become a cook. During that decade, I went to France and Spain to learn cuisine; then I worked as a manager/cook/chef at various restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area until 1992, when I opened my own restaurant, Timo's.
I have always been good at learning things from books, so I never took any cooking lessons. Before getting my first cooking job, I did a lot of cooking at home. After I got into restaurant kitchens, before I went for a new job interview, I would get the menu for the restaurant I was applying at and got familiar with the items they served. I got lucky: about three years after I started cooking for a living I nailed the job of Chef de Cuisine at one of the best Bay area restaurants at the time. If you are curious, that story is here. While at that job, I relied heavily on the two books by Jacques Pépin shown below.
Being a true heathen, I never did buy that all-American classic, the Joy of Cooking.

We are in a not-so-little-anymore town called Lakeside, about 30 miles East of San Diego; on the way, you drive through an area that must have been settled by furniture salesmen or carpenters: the two fairly big communities you pass are creatively named El Cajón (The Drawer) and La Mesa (The Table). And North to your left, the biggest and most prominent thing is romantically called Escondido (Hidden). 