Review: Nice Surprise
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 23, 2012
There is a nicely formatted and hyperlinked table of contents.The pictures are lovely, the text is clean and formatted well, and I did not spot any egregious errors.  There are amusing quotes sprinkled throughout, and I particularly liked the Wilde quote at the beginning of the salad section.The introduction contains a major plus:  "None of the recipes expect you to have cooked meat or sauces prepared ahead of time, nor do we cook with canned soups."  The cobbler filling is made from cherries, not canned filling.  The pot pie has no canned soup.  The cake has no cake mix.The recipes are simple yet appear luxurious in the pictures and sound very appealing.  I know it's a good cookbook when my mouth starts watering and I want to head for the kitchen and fire up the stove.  Even recipes similar to those I've seen before have some interesting variations, like some additional vegetables in the Chicken and Beans Over Rice recipe.I like it a lot.  This one's a keeper.