Thursday, February 10, 2022

Best Recipes from the Farmer's Wife Cookbook (Over 250 Blue Ribbon Recipes)

Author:    Beverly Hudson, Kari Cornell, Melinda Keefe
Genre:     Cookbooks

Paperback
ISBN #:    9780760369395
Voyageur Press
240 Pages
$21.88 Amazon
January 25, 2022

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Beloved by home cooks since the magazine was first published, the recipes resonate now more than ever as many of us -- from the countryside, city, and in between -- return from quick meals on the go to slow, scratch cooking, fresh and wholesome ingredients (often homegrown, self-made, or from the farmer's market), and the tradition of Sunday dinners and eating together with family and friends.

Best Recipes from the Farmer's Wife Cookbook brings together the most popular, easy-to-follow recipes and variations along with dozens of menus that originated in farm kitchens nationwide and appeared on the pages of the magazine over its publication around the start of the twentieth century.  This new edition is illustrated with color photographs and completely redesigned to appeal to a modern-day cook who wants to bring the warmth and family of the Farmer's Wife to their own kitchen.

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I have always made food from scratch, and have loved cooking since I was a child.  (I made my first cake at nine).  I still do, including canning and making my own sauces.  I just love the taste of homemade over processed foods.  I also love vintage cookbooks, and have found some wonderful recipes between their pages.

I would have loved to give this a five-star review, but there were things that bothered me.  Since I received this book in ebook form, it had some confusing pages.  Recipes were shown with two titles, and one recipe beneath the other, which, at first, made it confusing until I figured out what was going on.  Some recipes had added instructions in smaller type. 

Such as:  Listed Country Kitchen Salad; then Sloppy Joes on Toasted Buns below.  The first recipe is indeed Country Kitchen Salad, and then the ingredients for Sloppy Joes are listed directly below it.  Shouldn't each recipe have the title before the ingredients?  Not before the ingredients of the previous recipe?  It at first appeared that the Country Salad had no recipe, and the ingredients for the same was the ingredients for the Sloppy Joes...then, there was Chicken Salad and German Potato Salad, with the German Potato Salad ingredients listed directly under its name, and the chicken salad ingredients listed afterward...so you understand my questions there, I hope.

At any rate, after figuring that out, I began to enjoy the recipes.  I have been personally searching for a new recipe for baked beans (one that doesn't use canned pork and beans, which seems to be a main ingredient on the Internet) and this book has one that sounds delicious.  Yes, time-consuming, but worth it in the end.  I have found my new favorite baked bean recipe.

While you will find that the author has updated some of the recipes, they are easy to read and the ingredients are easy to procure in today's markets.  Aside from the initial confusion with the titles of the recipes (which is why I only gave it four stars -- and it may have just been an ebook format problem, but I don't know) this book is one that all home cooks should have, and I intend to purchase the hard copy for myself.

I was given an advance copy of this book from Edelweiss and the publisher but this in no way influenced my review.


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