Review: Needs a little editing to be Five Star good
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 18, 2012
I have always preferred to cook from scratch, but there are certain spice blends and such that I do buy. This book gives the reader the option to make their own versions of popular blends and mixes for a fraction of the cost of buying little packets or bottles of blends. It's also nice should you run out of a blend you do normally purchase.There are also recipes using some of the mixes as well as recipes for household cleaning products and laundry products. The problem that keeps this book from the five stars it should get is sloppy proofreading and editing. For example, one mideastern blend refers to crushing the sumac but the ingredient list fails to include sumac at all. As another reviewer noted, the pimento cheese recipe neglects any mention of cheese! The author needs to clean this work up or spring for a professional editor to proof it. Organization could be better as well.Complaints aside, there are many very useful lists for commonly used mixes and spice combos. The substitutions for things you just might run out of at the worst time such as heavy cream or evaporated milk are quite helpful. On the whole, for anyone who cooks, this should be in every e-library.