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My rating: 5 of 5 spoons
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From the author of The Homestyle Amish Kitchen Cookbook comes a great new collection of recipes, hints, and Plain wisdom for everyone who loves the idea of preserving fresh, wholesome foods. Whether instructing a beginning canner or helping a seasoned cook hone her skills, certified Master Food Preserver Georgia Varozza shows people how to get the very best out of their food.

Everything you need to know about canning in one book! This is a very detailed book on all the different aspects and types of canning. Includes a short history of canning, needed supplies, basic safety, recipes and guidelines for adapting those recipes to fit your taste. If you plan on getting into food preservation, I highly recommend this book. Everything is covered here from your super simple fruit butters, to tomatoes, fruits, vegetables and yes–even meats! The only downside I found was that, at least in the digital copy I received, there was no index. Other than that, a great book on canning!

I received a digital copy of this book from Harvest House through NetGalley.com for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

My rating: 5 of 5 spoons
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As a child in America, Giuliano Hazan’s mother, Marcella, packed him meatballs with potatoes and peas, veal stew with mushrooms, and other homemade dishes for lunch—dishes that in no way resembled the peanut butter sandwiches his classmates enjoyed. And so began his appreciation of great food. Hazan Family Favorites celebrates delicious recipes from the Hazan family, prepared just as Giuliano prepares them for his own family today. Here are 85 recipes for every course in the Italian meal, including Appetizers, Soups, Pastas and Rice, Meats and Seafood, and Sides and Desserts. With recipes from Swiss Chard Tortelloni to Strawberry Gelato to everything in between, Hazan Family Favorites offers an intimate look at this iconic family and their most beloved recipes.

As an Italian food lover, this book was right up my alley. I am more familiar with Southern Italian cookbing, but I thoroughly enjoyed the recipes, recipe backgrounds and anecdotes. I realize some think there were too many anecdotes, but this was a family history of food and I felt they struck the right tone.

The recipes were amazing. Where do I start? Old favorites, new loves and some non-traditional recipes (latkes anyone?) with an Italian twist. I’m dying to try the Brussel Sprouts Braised with Pancetta, Pistachio Baklava, Boeuf Giuliano, and so many more. I have a large list to cook now. I can’t wait to get started!

I received a digital edition of this book through NetGalley.com for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I realize I haven’t posted cookbook reviews in awhile and I just wanted you to know that I’m not just slacking off here! 🙂  Between multiple rounds of the flu and moving into our house, things have been more than  little crazy.  Also, some of the cookbooks I review are through NetGalley.com.  I get a digital copy for a limited amount of time.  However, some of them do not want you to publish reviews until a certain time such as 30 days before publishing, or even the week of the publishing date.  I do have to go ahead and read them so I don’t lose my copy before it’s reviewed, so I have some review sitting on my computer until such time as I can publish them.  (One of them I can’t publish until JUNE!!)  I have two more to write reviews for (that I can’t post from 10 days to a month), but I hope to have some new reviews posted here later this week or next week at the latest.  Thank your for your patience.

Happy Cooking!!

My rating: 5 of 5 spoons
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One hundred healthful and delicious Italian recipes centered on the best fresh, seasonal produce From artichoke frittata to zucchini soup, Vitale offers simple and nutritious recipes dedicated entirely to vegetables. Providing tips on selecting fresh ingredients and bringing out each dish’s unique flavor, Verdure represents the best of northern Italian cuisine, and is a must-have for anyone seeking no-frills meals using the best that any local produce market has to offer.

Fantastic cookbook centered around strictly vegetables prepared in the Northern Italian style. I love Italian cooking, and constantly look for ways to fix vegetables more and more in a way my family will enjoy and return for seconds. This book looks like a winner!! Each vegetable has its own section with a description, time of year it is harvested, best ways to prepare, other vegetables it goes well with an cooking times and multiple recipes. I can’t wait to start cooking!!

I received a digital copy of this book from Open Road Integrated Media to read and review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

My rating: 2 of 5 spoons
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From the garden to the table, cooking teacher and best-selling cookbook author Lynn Alley shows cooks and gardeners how to make the most of ten popular fresh herbs–including mint, dill, rosemary, thyme, parsley, tarragon, sage, basil, cilantro, and oregano–in this giftable, merchandisable, full-color cookbook.

In the fresh, vibrant pages of Cooking with Herbs, cooking teacher and best-selling cookbook author Lynn Alley offers fifty delicious recipes for cooking with ten of the most popular culinary herbs, as well as tips for growing your own fresh herbs at home.

I am an avowed herbaholic. I love fresh herbs!! I couldn’t wait to dive into this book! I was so surprised to find very little in this book. There is a tiny section on having an herb garden, but just your very basic information. The recipes were very simple to say the least! This might be a good book for a very beginner cook that wants to cook with fresh herbs, but it offered little to me.

I received a free digital copy of this book to read and give an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I realize this blogger must seem to be MIA.  I had an opportunity to travel out of state to visit my parents and my sister and her new husband who are on deputation to go to Botswana, Africa as missionaries.  No, I didn’t bring cookbooks with me.  It’s lots of fun just to visit for awhile.  I’m even getting to catch up with some aunts I haven’t seen in ages.  I’m just enjoying the visit and I’ll jump back into reviews when I get home.  Until them…

Happy Cooking!

My rating: 4 of 5 spoons
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I’m not sure what I expected going into this book, but it was way more than I thought it would be. If you want a book that pretty much covers anything you might ever want to know about garlic, this would be it. I will admit, portions of it were hard to read, being very dry, technical facts. There are some recipes, but not many. Honestly, most of the recipes did not appeal to me or were just basic recipes that you don’t even need a recipe for. (Pasta with garlic and oil? Eggs with green garlic shoots? Who needs a recipe for those?!) However, there is everything you want or need to know about growing, preserving and using your garlic here, including a detailed breakdown of all the different medical uses. I’m looking forward to hopefully being able to put in a garden this year for the first time in a long time, and I was wanting to grow garlic, so this will be very helpful for that, and I love the home remedy section. The book is worth it by far for those two portions.

I received a digital copy of this book from Watkins Publishing Ltd to read and review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

My rating: 4 of 5 spoons
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My mouth is watering and I’m craving some Mexican food now! Well written with lots of information, scrumptious recipes and glorious full-color photos. Recipe after recipe cries out to be made and enjoyed around the table with the family. Pati Jinich does a great job of giving great background on the recipes and ingredients without turning it into a boring lecture like some cookbooks I’ve read. It feels like your sitting in her kitchen chatting and can almost smell all the wonderful aromas of food cooking. Very well done!

I gave this book 4 out of 5 spoons due to some of the ingredients being hard to find.

I was given a digital copy of this book by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishers through NetGalley.com to read and give an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

My rating: 4 of 5 spoons
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This is a gem of a cookbook! We spent some time in New England a couple of years ago (and fell in love with it, by the way!), so I couldn’t wait to dig in to this cookbook. This book is chock full of yummy recipes from the region with a healthy sprinkling of foreign recipes in honor of New England’s diverse heritage. Boston Baked Beans, New England Boiled Dinner, Clam Bake, Fried Clams, Seafood Stuffing, Codfish Cakes, Maine Blueberry Pie, Red Flannel Hash and, of course, Whoopie Pies! I only had one issue with this book. In multiple recipes he states that the authentic recipe is more involved, so he’s giving you a shortcut by using something else instead. I wish he would have included the instructions for those of us who would like to go the extra mile to make it authentic. Otherwise, this is a great cookbook that I would LOVE to have on in my collection!

My rating: 5 of 5 spoons
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As someone looking forward to getting into canning and preserving more this summer, this cookbook was right up my alley! It is chock full of information and yummy recipes. I love that it doesn’t just tell you what to do–it explains WHY and how to use different variations. I can’t wait for the summer fruits to start coming into season so I can put these to work!  The initial copy I reviewed did not include amounts which cost it one “spoon”, but I was contacted by Storey Publishing and given the final draft which DOES include amounts for the recipes.  Now that issue is fixed, I unhesitatingly give this a 5 spoon review! 🙂

I was sent a digital copy of this cookbook to review by Storey Publishing through NetGalley.com for review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.