5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazingly good recipes, August 10, 2010
This review is from: Country Breakfasts (Paperback)
I picked up this book at a garage sale for $1 because I love to make good breakfasts for my children. The recipes in this book are incredible. Out of all the recipes I've tried (and I've tried probably 1/3) there is not one recipe in the book that I would not give my highest ratings. I am a bit of a food snob and this is probably the only cookbook I own that rates so high on so many recipes. Some of these are now my tried and true recipes that my family craves over and over again.
My 20-yr old son said that he will make sure he owns the cookbook by the time he is on his own. I plan on buying quite a few more to give as gifts.
Give it a try!
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3.0 out of 5 stars
It's not bad. It's just not great, either., August 16, 2009
This review is from: Country Breakfasts (Paperback)
When it's time to cull my ever-growing cookbook collection (I'm always running out of room), this book is always on the Maybe pile. It has managed to survive the shelf space squeeze for ten years, but its fate is never certain.
Despite a great premise -- don't we all love breakfast? -- the book has never managed to blow me out of the water. Unlike the Jamison's breakfast cookbook (
A Real American Breakfast, which I completely recommend), you won't be blown away by any of the recipes in this cookbook. They aren't BAD -- they just aren't special, in the sense that you'll say, "Wow, I wouldn't have thought of that." It's primarily variations on breakfast staples you know already, as well as breakfast sweets and quick breads that are rarely in my repertoire. (I've nothing against them; I just don't think to make them.)
For example, there are recipes for leftover oatmeal pancakes, oatmeal corn cakes, buckwheat flapjacks, blueberry banana pancakes, banana walnut hotcakes. Nothing bad in the bunch... but I quickly feel, "How many pancake recipes do I need?" Chapters are devoted to variations on the pancake / crepe / waffle theme; good grains (including cornmeal mush and apple apricot granola); eggs (from a basic omelet to eggs creole); hearty companions (cider-syrup-glazed ham, red flannel hash); "the savory side" (three-alarm potatoes, black bean chili); sandwiches to start the day (paprikash mushrooms on toast, pear and feta cheese baguette); quick breads and coffee cakes; trifles and tarts; fruits "simple and sublime" (cantaloupe boats, strawberry rhubarb compote); the jelly cupboard; drinks hot and cold (Mocha coffee, mulled cider). Most of the sweetening comes from maple syrup, because the author's from New England.
After reading that list, you're surely thinking, "What is she complaining about?" But while I take this book out and paw through it, it never seems to supply me with an "OOoooh let's make that." The book has climbed onto the shelf out of the Maybe pile several times based on those paprikash mushrooms on toast, but over the years (I've had this book at least a decade), we usually make something else for breakfast because these suggestions are too complex or time consuming; because we don't have the more interesting ingredients on hand, and I'm not going shopping at 6am for pears, feta and baguettes; or because they're not all that special (I can add rolled oats to pancakes without a book to inspire me). I always think that I should cook more often from this cookbook. I just never do.
It has no photos at all; some people care about that, I know.
Ultimately, this cookbook has stayed in my library. But don't feel as though you should make a special effort to add it to yours.
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