I'm not too shabby at cooking, but I feel like I lack a lot of knowledge. It's not something I was ever too interested in growing up, but within the past couple of years, I've come to enjoy trying new recipes and expanding the skills I have.

That being said, I'm looking for a really good comprehensive and basic cookbook. Some of the ones I've been thinking about purchasing are How to Cook Everything, Joy of Cooking, or The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

Does anyone have any experience/feedback with these, or can you recommend any others that have been good for learning?

I don't have experience with cookbooks. I usually get my recipes online. What might be a good idea though, is to contact a local community college, your local school system, or the department of human services in your area and see if they have any cooking classes. That way you'd get to learn new cooking skills and meet people at the same time.

That's such a wonderful idea. I didn't even think about the community college. Thanks for the suggestion :)

I have How to Cook Everything and I ADORE it. I also highly recommend the Knack cooking books. I have one for my slow cooker and one for dorm and apartment cooking (no special tools, little space etc). They have a very good visual guide for each recipe, run through how to do even the basics like dicing and skinning things, and offer ideas for changing the recipes up to suit your tastes.

5 years and a college degree later, I have some of the recipes from Knack memorized. They're always a hit.

Also...look for cooking blogs. A lot of them give step by step instructions. Simply Scratch is a particularly good one- simple recipes for all kinds of things and lots of pictures.