My first month of the cookbook review is over and I made it out alive. Actually I enjoyed doing the cookbook review and having the challenge to pick out and create several recipes from one book and post them on a specific day.
You see, I am some what of a cookbook fanatic. I drool over cookbooks every time I walk into a bookstore or any store that might happen to sell any books. I will stand there for hours and hours on end looking and finally will narrow it down to one book to get. Or sometimes I just spend hours and hours and am cheap and just ‘barrow” ideas (SHHH don’t tell anyone).
So this little cookbook review challenge gives me an outlet and a more organized way for me to use my stacks of cookbooks. Plus a benefit for you, the readers, is that you get my honest opinion and feedback about the cookbooks and recipes within (and you get the actual recipes- win, win situation here).
For July’s book I featured Rachael Ray’s Classic 30-Minute Meals: The All Occasion Cookbook. In which overall I had a great experience with. This book is a collection of her recipes from pretty much all her books and website. There are several different sections with appropriate themed recipes for each section (read more about that here). I really enjoyed how the book was set up and that there were lots of pictures (you know how I feel about that). Unfortunately, a lot of the pictures were just of Rachel and not food (hum… this is a cookbook right- not Rachael’s personal photo album). I would defiantly recommend this book. It is a cookbook for the whole family (with a kids section included) and it definitely gets you familiar with Rachael’s way of cooking and style of recipe writing- in case you are interested in checking out any of her other cookbooks (she does have a gazillion).
I would say the Crunchy Oven-Baked Chicken Toes was probably my most favorite recipe from this book. This is probably a swayed opinion since this was Eric’s favorite too, and the only one that out of all the recipes I tired from the book that he has asked for again!
The next one I really liked was the Super-Stuffed French Bread Pizza Rustica. It was really ‘stuffed’ and had so many flavors going on in it. To make it even better it was soooo easy to make (love those types of inners- ones that seem complex but are really easy) and it made enough to feed a crowd.
It was a toss up for which recipe I thought was best out of the two ‘chicken and sauce’ recipes that I tried from this book. Both were super easy and tasted great, but I would have to say that I favored Vicki’s Chicken and Grapes because of it’s uniqueness (chicken and grapes and mustard sauce???- I am still confused on how it works out but it does).
The last chicken recipe I tried was Honey Mustard BBQ Chicken- AKA “Honey Mustard Chicken” . I really liked this recipe. It tasted great, but for some reason it did not turn out like the picture in the book (I totally blame Rachael Ray- not me for the mishap).
And the last recipe I tried (my bonus recipe for you all) was Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna Roll-ups with Gorgonzola Cream Sauce. Which in my humble opinion was not that great. But hey winners with 4 out of 5 tried recipes- not bad!
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