The Woman's Day Cookbook: Great Recipes, Bright Ideas, And Healthy Choices for Today's Cook [Hardcover]

Kathy Farrell-Kingsley (Author), Woman's Day editors (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1995

The first major, lavishly illustrated cookbook from the nation's top women's magazine offers more than seven hundred recipes--from quick dishes to elaborate dinners--along with the magazine's trademark cooking strategies. 250,000 first printing. Major ad/promo. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A woman's days are busy, so the 700-plus recipes gathered here by the editors of Woman's Day magazine include streamlined methods for mainstream family fare. In the recipe for Buffalo Chicken, bottled blue-cheese dressing sauces up store-cooked rotisserie chicken pulled from the bone; Topsy Turvy Beef Pie combines ground beef, leftover mashed potatoes and frozen vegetables in a layered, meat-crust dish. Included are dishes of wider range: Moroccan-style Mahi-Mahi with tomatoes, pine nuts and dried currants; Asian Meatball Soup, with ground pork, packaged Oriental noodles and bok choy flavored with ginger and sesame oil. The chapter "Grains & Beans" embraces the current interest in complex carbohydrates; "Desserts" includes Deep Chocolate Hazelnut Cake and assorted cookies. The chapters "Entertaining" and "Celebrations" list menus, recipes and party planning tips; "Investment Cooking" turns a concentrated session of cooking into freezer dinners for coming weeks. Nutritional analyses accompany all recipes. 250,000 first printing; Literary Guild and Better Homes and Gardens Book Club selections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This huge cookbook contains 700 recipes, charts, color photographs, tips, do-ahead notes, a glossary, and wine notes. In addition to chapters organized by main ingredient or course, there are "plan-ahead" recipes, each designed to make several meals, and complete menus for entertaining. There is also a section on "investment cooking," as well as a year's worth of menu suggestions from popular features in the magazine. Recipes run the gamut, from simple, elegant dishes using fresh ingredients to far-less-successful combinations of convenience foods; some of the low-fat recipes in particular seem contrived. Woman's Day has a large, loyal audience, and there is sure to be great demand for its big general cookbook, which has a first printing of 250,000.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 720 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (November 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670858765
• ISBN-13: 978-0670858767
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #181,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I NEVER used to cook until I got this book. I love it., February 18, 1998

By 

M. Burns (San Mateo, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Woman's Day Cookbook: Great Recipes, Bright Ideas, And Healthy Choices for Today's Cook (Hardcover)

This book is great, especially for a novice cook. The recipes are clearly labeled: low fat, easy, 30-minute, make-ahead, etc. There's a section called "cook once eat twice" for making a new recipe from the leftovers of another dish. They also have "investment cooking" where you spend 3-4 hours in the kitchen and you've prepared 6-8 completely separate meals to freeze for later. I always hated to cook, but I've been using this book for 3 weeks now and cooking almost every night. It's fun!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars May be the best all-purpose cookbook on the market today., March 25, 2005

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Woman's Day Cookbook: Great Recipes, Bright Ideas, And Healthy Choices for Today's Cook (Hardcover)

As a general cookbook, this one is hard to beat. Geared to the needs of a wide spectrum of users, the book has a huge variety of well-seasoned recipes reflecting many different kinds of ethnic cookery. Each recipe carries a stated range of difficulty from complex to simple, a complete guide to preparation, and an introductory note describing interesting facts about the recipe or its ingredients, the amount of preparation time, and the amount of cooking time.

Divided into the usual sections--such as Grains and Beans, Desserts, Chicken and Turkey--this cookbook has an unusual feature that will delight the busiest cook. At the front of each section is a complete list of the recipes in that section, with individual recipes classified as Easy, 30 Minutes, 60 Minutes, Microwave, Make Ahead, Low Fat, One Pot, and Classic. If a recipe falls into more than one category, it is listed more than once, so that someone looking for Coq au Vin, listed here as Chicken in Red Wine, a classic recipe, will find it under Classics, but also in the Easy, Lowfat, and One Pot categories.

Long boxes on each page, adjacent to the binding, offer helpful tips for cooking, recipe variations, microwave adaptations, and useful trivia (the number of shrimp per pound, depending on size, how to carve a roast, how to get perfectly rounded muffins, for example). Several longer inserts, almost a page long, appear in green boxes and offer the "how-to's" of basic cooking--everything from grilling vegetables to making perfect pie crusts.

The most helpful feature for those who are health-conscious or on special diets is that every recipe provides the counts of calories, carbs, protein grams, fat grams, cholesterol, and sodium, taking the guesswork completely out of planning healthy, nutritious, good-tasting meals. Sections at the end of the book provide menus for a year, special recipes for entertaining and celebrations, and information on herbs, cheeses, and wines.

I initially selected this cookbook to give at a bridal shower, but when I had a chance to get it home and really look at it carefully, I bought a copy for myself. I had used and enjoyed the Joy of Cooking and the Fanny Farmer Cooking School Cookbook for years, but I have now found that this newer cookbook offers so many more features that I use it nearly all the time, in preference to my old standbys. The recipes, very well seasoned, are terrific--I haven't found a single dud!--and I now have many new favorites with fewer calories and fat grams! Recommended without reservation. Mary Whipple

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Women's Day Cookbook, February 3, 2000

By 

Nicki K. (Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Woman's Day Cookbook: Great Recipes, Bright Ideas, And Healthy Choices for Today's Cook (Hardcover)

This is the best (and I mean best) cookbook on the market today. There are few "fancy" ingredients and 99% of the recipes can be made with what you have on hand. If you don't have something, it's easy to substitute. Need something elegant, look here. No nonsense, easy to use, and better yet, great recipes!