Retro Breakfast: Memorable Meals Morning, Noon, or Night [Hardcover]

Linda Everett (Author), Richard Perry (Author)

Book Description

Series: Retro | Publication Date: April 2004

Rise and shine, it’s breakfast time! If you think the smell of bacon and hot coffee wafting from a warm kitchen is a thing of the past, then bring back the bounty of breakfast with RETRO BREAKFAST: MEMORABLE MEALS MORNING, NOON, OR NIGHT. From the coffee-stained pages of classic American cookbooks to recipes handed down from memory, Linda Everett and Richard Perry bring us the best of breakfast from rural Washington State to down-home Alabama. More than 120 recipes capture classic tastes of the most important meal of the day, including Okanogan Omelet, Lulu’s Café Home Fries, Castlerock Blueberry Griddle Cakes, and Southern Exposure Sweet Potato Biscuits. Featuring nostalgic images that will encourage you to wake up and eat no matter what time of day, this Retro guide is sure to make anyone an early riser.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Throwing calorie-counting caution to the wind, this newest installment of the Collectors Press’s Retro series takes readers back to a time before early morning conference calls and instant coffee, when breakfast really was the most important meal of the day. Complete with nostalgic illustrations and classic advertisements, the book offers more than 125 recipes that recall how nice it was when everyday breakfast consisted of omelets, flapjacks and oatmeal. Time-tested standards like Heart ‘N’ Soul Biscuits ‘N’ Gravy and guilty pleasures like New Hampshire Fried Apples are the primary fare here. Those who can’t bear to break their diets will be relieved to find a few lighter dishes like Berkeley Health Bars. Some readers may be annoyed to find that the book’s heartwarming retro pictures and corny slogans don’t always match up with the recipes printed beside them, and vegetarians may get frustrated by the many references to bacon, ham and sausage. But fans of hearty fare should be pleased with this volume, and, as the authors would have us remember, there’s always room for breakfast at the dinner table.
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About the Author

An award-winning watercolor artist, LINDA EVERETT is the author of five other books in the Retro series as well as a freelance writer and researcher for A&E’s Biography and MSNBC. Linda resides in Ocean Park, Washington, amid a large collection of cookbooks and recipes. When she’s not working on new writing projects, Linda enjoys cooking in her retro-styled kitchen, growing flowers in her garden, and walking her dogs on the beach.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Collectors Press (April 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1888054875
• ISBN-13: 978-1888054873
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 8.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #792,794 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's the most important book of the day, April 27, 2006

By 

Andrew S. Rogers (Stamford, Connecticut) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Retro Breakfast: Memorable Meals Morning, Noon, or Night (Hardcover)

As easy a target as the classic morning meals in this book can be, what I enjoyed most about "Retro Breakfast" is that the recipes were presented without much comment on the editors' part. So many books of this sort (James Lileks' "Gallery of Regrettable Food" or "Interior Desecrations," notably) are larded to the point of bursting with ironic asides, arch giggles, and conspiratorial winks to the reader to acknowledge that we sure are cooler *now* than those people were back *then.*

Mercifully, here we just got a bunch of old-timey (like, 1950s-70s) recipes, mixed in with the "Retro..." series' signature period artwork, fonts, and colorful presentation. We can add our own hipster swagger if we want while we offer up some of "Mother's Cinnamon Flop" (p. 94) or "Sunday Mornin' Hotcakes" (p. 114). But even if we don't, we'll still wind up with what on the whole look like some pretty appetizing starts to the day.

The phrase "look like" does remind me, though, of one disappointing fact: the illustrations that accompany given recipes don't always seem to be illustrations *of* the given recipe. It's hard to tell sometimes if we're looking at the actual dish, or just something similar from the archive.

Some of us were fortunate enough to have enjoyed breakfasts like this with our Saturday morning cartoons, back in the good old days, and it's a nice stroll through our memories to have them available to us again. And even if we never get around to making any of these things, the book itself is a great retro reference to have around.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Fun!, June 5, 2008

By 

Cookbook Collector (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Retro Breakfast: Memorable Meals Morning, Noon, or Night (Hardcover)

Sure you could get these recipes off the net - but for those that love books - the graphics add quite a bit of fun! Great for a housewarming present (in combo with some of the other "Retro-" books from this series!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book taught me how to make cornbread., January 18, 2009

By 

Frequent Shopper "Likes to Cook" (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Retro Breakfast: Memorable Meals Morning, Noon, or Night (Hardcover)

Despite considering myself a fairly competent cook, I had never been able to master cornbread. I had always been content to leave the work to Jiffy, until I happened upon the recipe in this book, thinking to myself "this just sounds too easy to mess up." Sure enough, it was a success, and therefore worthy of my five stars. Most of the other recipes sound pretty good, too, though the silly recipe for scrapple clearly proves the author has never been to the Delaware Valley.