Customer Reviews

Good Seasons Casual Entertaining

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Good Seasons makes those packets of salad dressing that you mix in your own cruet by adding oil and water. I haven't bought these packets in years - it's a pain to make and to me they really don't taste any better than bottled salad dressing. Perhaps their sales have slumped, because this cookbook is aimed at getting readers to buy more of those little packets. All 59 recipes somehow incorporate this ingredient. I didn't actually realize that fact when I purchased "Casual Entertaining" from the bargain book bin at a chain store (I really didn't look closely), and I probably wouldn't have purchased it if I'd known.

In some cases, the recipe requires making the dressing with oil first, such as a marinade for chicken. For other recipes, the packet is added directly to the ingredients as seasoning. Some of the dishes aren't obvious candidates for salad dressing; however, the packets mostly blend into the background. The "Simple Chili" recipe I made, for example, didn't overtly taste like Italian salad dressing. In fact, the chili was quite good. I think that many of the recipes would actually taste fine without the dressing, which may be necessary for people on low sodium diets as the packets are loaded with salt.

The second theme of the book is "casual entertaining," which mostly means appetizers, grilling, and simple sautéed recipes. I'm not sure if I'd serve many of these recipes when I'm entertaining, as they're all pretty basic. However, I would make some of these recipes for a quick weeknight meal or a family get-together. Unfortunately, no nutritional information is included for recipes; perhaps a bigger problem is that some of the recipes don't include the number of servings produced. For example, the chili recipe just indicates a yield of 5 cups, and many others don't even include that much information. Overall, "Casual Entertaining" is a decent short cookbook collection with some tasty recipes; some of which are depicted in color photos. However, the recipes are fairly basic and aimed squarely at getting the reader to buy more Good Seasons salad dressing packets.