A simple set of ingredients and instructions seems dead without a lively account or description along with hints and tips only your grandmother or best friend would take the time to tell you. I think that Seasoned With Love teaches all the basics needed to cook almost anything. They are the life energy of the author. When you hold a cookbook in your hands, there is no way to imagine how many hours went into writing it. I think a cookbook may in fact be one of the most difficult books to write.
Cookbooks can be an individual biography or a cultural biography.
Food reminds us of people, places, etc. My aunt and I had a good laugh. Most of our family pictures are at a dinner party or at a table. Most of the cookbooks I enjoy are ones written by individual authors. To me, a cookbook written by a corporation sometime lacks life, even though they can be very interesting to read.