The Accidental Gourmet Weekends and Holidays: Festive Meals for Family and Friends [Spiral-bound]

Sally Sondheim (Author), Suzannah Sloan (Draft Writer)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2003

From the authors of "The Accidental Gourmet Weeknights" come 52 elegant Saturday company dinners, 52 comforting Sunday family suppers, and 23 holiday feasts.

In "The Accidental Gourmet Weeknights," Sally Sondheim and Suzannah Sloan showed time-pressed cooks how to redefine their relationship with their kitchens and create stress-free, fuss-free family meals every weeknight of the year. But Sondheim and Sloan know that feeding family and friends on weekends and holidays, when expectations are higher, can be equally challenging. In "The Accidental Gourmet Weekends and Holidays," they now complete the year by giving home cooks everywhere a foolproof way to put a delicious meal on the table every Saturday, Sunday, and holiday, even with limited time and resources. The secret? Sondheim and Sloan have redesigned old-fashioned home cooking to fit perfectly into today's often hectic, fragmented lifestyle in an easy-to-follow format that allows cooks of all levels to achieve spectacular results. The taste that used to take grandma days to prepare can now be on the table in a matter of hours.

Every meal is composed of main, side, and dessert dishes that have been carefully chosen to complement one another, take advantage of seasonal ingredients, minimize kitchen time, and maximize enjoyment. Each menu comes with a convenient, comprehensive, and organized shopping list and a step-by-step countdown to ensure that dinner gets to the table in the right order and at the right temperature.

Having a dinner party on Saturday night? Serve roast capon with a dark cherry sauce, accompanied by herbed asparagus; hearts of palm salad with tarragon dressing; and chocolate-glazed,custard-filled pound cake. Or how about salmon steaks crusted with pepper and served with orange sauce, accompanied by sherried carrots, a bean sprout salad, and a frosted chocolate-mint cake? A family gathering on Sunday evening might offer maple-glazed ham steaks with a creamy potato casserole, green beans in a tangy mustard sauce, and a strawberry-rhubarb crisp or a chicken and vegetable stew, sour cream muffins, and apple dumplings. There are also special, sumptuous meals for holidays and celebrations.

No matter the occasion, "The Accidental Gourmet Weekends and Holidays" is the one book that will guarantee a memorable meal every time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Paired up again for their second Accidental Gourmet title, Sondheim and Sloan expand on their attempt to make home-cooked meals accessible to all, focusing on special dinners for weekends and holidays. This volume lays out 127 meals, each with at least three components: a main dish, sides and dessert. The dishes, which often have cutesy titles like Rambunctious Ravioli Soup, Rapscallion Salad, Boisterous Bread and Disorderly Dessert, employ familiar cooking techniques and ingredients available at mainstream grocery stores. Accessibility and ease are the strengths of this cookbook. Each meal is presented in step-by-step fashion with a shopping list and a checklist of staple foods, a list of necessary kitchen equipment and a countdown of ordered cooking steps to ensure that all the components of the meal will be ready and hot at the same time. According to the authors' introduction, all of their meals can be prepared in less than a few hours. The recipes are targeted to emulate the dishes that "used to take our grandmothers days to prepare" and, as such, are unassuming-no fusion cuisine here. Good ol' American cooking is emphasized: gelatin makes a frequent appearance in desserts, for example, and cheese and cream are often added to vegetable side dishes. That said, Sondheim and Sloan do integrate fresh fruits and vegetables into every meal and encourage lavish use of flavor enhancers such as fresh herbs, wine and liqueurs. While this cookbook may not push or inspire an advanced or curious cook, it does a terrific job of breaking down good home cooking into simple steps, making tasty dinners accessible to even the most hurried families.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Sally Sondheim and Suzannah Sloan are the authors of The Accidental Gourmet Weeknights and A Dinner a Day. They live in the Pacific Northwest.

Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 544 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743227816
• ISBN-13: 978-0743227810
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 8.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,799,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What a Sad Waste!!, August 8, 2007

By 

Sue Mearns (Rochester, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Accidental Gourmet Weekends and Holidays: Festive Meals for Family and Friends (Spiral-bound)

The several recipes I have tried in this book are great. BUT the format absolutely could not be worse. Ingredients on one page, turn the page for the method, every time. The index is worthless because it lists things like "Aw Shucks" as a corn recipe, or "Blithe Spirits" under asparagus. The names give no clue whatsoever as to what is in a dish or how it's constructed, and all the names are so cutesy they would gag the proverbial maggot. A waste, because the few recipes I've used are really good, but in the main it's too frustrating to try to use this one. Seems like the authors just got really bad advice on the design.

5.0 out of 5 stars Cooking for fun, May 30, 2010

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Accidental Gourmet Weekends and Holidays: Festive Meals for Family and Friends (Spiral-bound)

I have forgotten how much fun to read and follow the recipes in this cookbook until I bought a copy for my friend.

4.0 out of 5 stars Simple to Follow, July 2, 2008

By 

A. Bryan "new bride" (Rio Rancho, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Accidental Gourmet Weekends and Holidays: Festive Meals for Family and Friends (Spiral-bound)

This book was given to me by my grandma for Christmas and my husband and I are truely ennjoying having it around the house. It is easy to follow and makes plenty, not to mention, I am always a fan of anything that includes dinner AND dessert. My hunsband and I have learned so many new recipes! The only real complaint is that there is no pictures, but I hear they included pictures in Dinner A Day so I will be ordering it soon. I have made some alterations to the recipes, biggest one being to leave out all onions since I am allergic, but it is a wonderful guide and the recipes come out fabulous, even if you make a change or two! These books are one of a kind in the fact that they guide you from the grocery list to the utensils needed and even have a countdown clock telling you at what order to make the dishes so everything is ready in perfect timing for dinner.