Review: Fun Book, But Not Too Useful
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 10 14, 2011
When I read a cookbook that calls for envelopes of Hidden Valley Ranch dip mix, or cans of mushroom soup concentrate, I always wonder "Did I waste a bunch of money for recipes that were originally published in advertising?"It's one thing to make do with convenience items when you're really pressed for time and your pantry is empty, but planning ahead to use those items is really dumb. Mushroom soup makes a convenient sauce, saving all of 2 minutes while cooking, at an extra cost of 75c, resulting in less tasty food. The $22.50/hour that 2 minutes is higher than you'd net from a $90,000 job, after taxes and work expenses.On the other hand, the recipes all look like they'd produce tasty foods, if you have no objection to consuming chemicals that never saw the inside of your great-grandmother's kitchen.Cookbooks, however, serve a variety of different purposes. Some cookbooks teach cooking skills. This one does not. Some cookbooks serve as an encyclopedic reference so you can find out how to make a food you've never made before. This one does not. Some cookbooks are fun to page through, and serve to inspire us, when we cannot figure out what to fix. This cookbook hits that one right on the head. Even if we don't fix the particular recipe in the cookbook, cookbook might give us an idea of what to do with the food ingredient in the refrigerator that will go bad if we don't use it pretty soon.And this IS a fun cookbook. There's an amusing quip between each two recipes. ("Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts." The cookbook is fairly well organized, with each recipe starting on a new page. The artistic design is excellent, there are few if any typos in the words, suggesting that there aren't many places where they specify a tablespoon of arsenic when they meant a teaspoon of alum (drat, and I DID so like Aunt Alice!). They even get the grammar right.And the author obviously has a sense of humor. Unfortunately, that comes out in the names of the recipes. If you're watching TV with your loved one, and leisurely paging through cookbooks during commercials, trying to compose a shopping list, that's one thing. If you suddenly realize that you need to fix supper, because Joe raided the refrigerator at 3 AM, and you no longer have those leftovers you were counting on, you may need to scour through the table of contents of a dozen or more cookbooks, trying to figure out what you can fix that sounds good, with the ingredients you have on hand.It's at that point that "Life Sucks Golf Balls Casserole" ceases being a cutesy menu item, "Chloe's Chicken Salad (which she stole from Phoebe)" becomes more acceptable and "Cashew Chicken Salad" (all three are recipes in this cookbook) becomes absolutely fantastic as a name for a recipe.I've spoken mostly of being inspired by this cookbook, but I intend to try "Not Yo Mama's Apple Pie" in the next couple of days. Not without modification, of course. The author calls for shortening in the pie crust, and as I want neither cancer nor heart disease, I will use healthful rendered lard instead of the trans-fat-laden shortening. It's a very similar recipe to the one I normally use, though, and if it's a little better, I'm always happy to steal a good idea."A conclusion," one of the interstitial notes points out, "is the place you get to when you're tired of thinking." I'm tired of thinking. And while I can hardly call this a great cookbook for everyone, it certainly has its good points, and depending on your needs, may be a great cookbook for you.(There are previews of a couple of romance novels included, but if you wanted those, you could get the free samples of the books from the Kindle store without the bother of a cookbook.)