Customer Reviews

Christmas with Family & Friends Cookbook: Favorite recipes, homemade memories and little touches that make the holidays warm & cozy. (Seasonal Cookbook Collection)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is quite a sweet thing to give as a gift at Xmas, as it starts with the various contributors' memories of Xmas, then goes on to many seasonal recipes that I have until now fudged my way through from stuff I've found on the internet, so I was fairly pleased with this freebie. I was pleasantly surprised as some of the books in this line have been pretty disappointing (like the Circle Of Friends Slowcooker Cookbook).

I did like that the recipes are a tad easier to follow, with measurements that seem to be for the most in teaspoons, not always in American cups, but I have had to look up some things: half and half = equal amounts of milk and cream/ corn syrup (handily available on amazon.co.uk!), which can be substituted by molasses, maple syrup, honey or golden syrup/US biscuits = US bread/kielbasa - Polish sausage, Cheddar French-fried onions (a bit like a breadcrumb coating), red velvet cake mix, white cake mix,...

Again, though, many of the recipes use shop-bought stuff such as canned chicken, ready-made salsa, tinned chicken soup, broken crackers/biscuits, biscuit baking mix, frozen shredded hash browns, refrigerated buttermilk biscuits, eggnog is made with bought eggnog, jazzed up, Erma Lee's chicken soup is made with tinned chicken broth, cornbread is made with packet mix, canned sauces, and weirdly, a Veggie Cheese Chowder contains chicken soup and chicken bouillon...

Overall, this has much more choice than I expected, and features plenty of soups, puds, salads and mains (1 turkey recipe, others were beef and chicken mainly).

However, I was quite put off off by the high fat, salt, sugar and calorie content of some of the stuff, and the total lack of calories per dish/serving (one salad contained 1lb bacon, 8oz cheese, mayonnaise, sugar, full-fat milk, and boiled eggs as well as tortillas full of salt. Meatball casserole contained 1lb beef and 16oz sour cream. A lasagna dish serving 16 contained 2lb beef, eggs, 30oz ricotta cheese, 32 oz Colby Jack cheese and 48oz ready-made salsa. Cheesy chicken had about 20oz chicken, and 32oz of cheese!! ).

Some nice stuff, some heart-attacks waiting to happen, some totally fab sounding puddings that I will be trying out (snow pie, snow cakes, peppermint mud pie).

This book is through and through American Christmas and forget Vegetarians for that matter! But if you want to make a good all round American feed, I'm sure it would do the trick.