Best Recipes from American Country Inns and Bed and Breakfasts [Hardcover]

Kitty Maynard (Author), Lucian Maynard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 11, 2004

The best crowd-pleasing recipes from widely acclaimed country inns and bed & breakfasts in the United States are collected in this unique cookbook and travel guide. More than 340 inns and 1,500 recipes are collected here, some from the finest chefs in America, while others represent the best in mouth-watering homestyle cooking.

More than a cookbook, Best Recipes from American Country Inns and Bed & Breakfasts is organized alphabetically - state-by-state. It is a reliable guide to the inns themselves, including addresses, phone numbers, and a listing of activities available at each inn. There are two extensive indexes. One allows you to find the inns by city and state, and the other allows the reader to find any recipe or type of recipe quickly and easily.

Kitty and Lucian Maynard have written two similar books, The American Country Inn and Bed & Breakfast Cookbook, Vol. I and Vol. II. These have been selections of Book-of-the-Month Club, the Better Homes and Gardens Book Club, and Family Bookshelf. The first book was featured on the back of Just Right cereal boxes. Reviews rave about the excellent, tasty recipes:

"Everything we tried was terrific!" - Brunswick (Maine) Times Record
"Many of these dishes are unique creations of the inn chefs and are not to be found elsewhere." - The Midwest Book Review
"Chock full of mouthwatering recipes . . . a grand selection of entrees." - Levittown (Pennsylvania) Courier-Times

Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson (February 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401600980
• ISBN-13: 978-1401600983
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 8.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #927,183 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #47 in Books > Travel > Reference & Tips > Food & Lodging > Bed & Breakfast

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Travel/Cooking Hybrid Unsatisfying, April 15, 2004

By 

Karen (ATLANTA, Gabon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Best Recipes from American Country Inns and Bed and Breakfasts (Hardcover)

I had several problems with this book. As a travel guide to inns and B&Bs across the country, it is well organized and informative. But as a book that purports to deliver the "best" in country inn cooking, it leaves a bit to be desired.

Instead of gathering recipes and actually publishing the best ones they found (which would have resulted in a richly varied selection of dishes of consistently good quality), the authors seem to have selected the inns first, then published a handful of each inn's best offerings. This results in a jumble of recipes that veer wildly from haute cuisine challenging to "open-a-can" basic, throwing together in a very unsatisfying manner recipes based mostly on convenience foods with recipes designed to creatively showcase fresh local ingredients. And since the book is organized by STATE, instead of by grouping the recipes together logically by type, if you want to see, for example, all of the redundant muffin recipes (LOTS of duplication here), you must look in the index in the back of the book and seek them out, state by state, one page at a time.

I also find the cover design of this book to be a tad misleading. While the gorgeously constructed dish that is pictured on the front cover may well be found somewhere in this book, it shares space with recipes that offer no more deliberation than "open a few cans, stir everything together, serve it in a casserole dish". If you are attracted to this volume because it appears to offer elegance and innovation as the cover is certainly attempting to suggest, you will be disappointed.

In summary, I didn't like this book because it is difficult to browse, offers recipes of inconsistent quality, and has a habit of mentioning ingredients and techniques that may be unfamiliar to many home cooks, without offering further explanation. In short, it is not a well-organized and informative cooking book.

HOWEVER, as a random collection of recipes, it might turn out to be just dandy. With a purported 1500 to choose from, each of us are bound to find a handful of treasures that are well-suited to the way we like to cook and eat, regardless of experience or skill level. Just be prepared to have to sieve through pages and pages of things you think are uninteresting before you can find those gems.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money!, August 25, 2005

By 

Mark Twain "Gillian" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Best Recipes from American Country Inns and Bed and Breakfasts (Hardcover)

This book was a huge disappointment, and I returned my copy. As the recipes are divided by Inn, main dishes, side dishes, breakfasts, breads, desserts are totally mixed together. The print is small and pale. Worse, it does not include any comments to indicate that the recipes are tried-and-true, or what makes them special -- and they don't appear to have even been tested by the authors. There are a number of outstanding cookbooks featuring the best recipes from B&Bs, and the others are sorted by subject (so all cakes will be together, etc.), include the innkeepers' comments about why they're so special, were tested by the authors, and include the authors observations. Amazon carries most (if not all) of them. Don't waste your money on this garbage!

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Americas Best Bed & Breakfast Lucien Maynard, December 6, 2005

By 

First National Bank "love of books." (South Africa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Best Recipes from American Country Inns and Bed and Breakfasts (Hardcover)

I had the extreme misfortune to purchase both of the Maynards Books. The recipes are riddled with errors from Page 1 recipe 1 - example first recipe on Page 1 - 1 plus 2 Tablespoons of WHAT.AS IT IS EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE TO RETURN BOOKS FROM SOUTH AFRICSA I AM DISGUSTED THAT PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS ARE ALLOWED TO PUBLISH WITHOUT CHECKING THE CONTENTS OF THESE BOOKS.OUR EXCHANGE RATE IS PROHIBITIVE SO IS THE POSTAGE. BOTH OF THE BOOKS PURCHASED ARE A DISGRACE TO THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY. WE DO NOT ALWAYS HAVE THE TIME TO PERUSE QUICKLY AND I CAN IDENTIFY AT LEAST 7 ERROS FROM PAGES 1 - 40 ON ONE OF THE BOOKS ONLY.