Don't Panic - Quick, Easy, and Delicious Meals for your Family

Susie Martinez, Vanda Howell, Bonnie Garcia, Authors

This was an interesting cookbook. As I flipped through it, there was a lot of recipes I wanted to make (but I didn't think my parents would eat). Mom didn't really see anything she liked and wanted to try, so most of the recipes I made were just for me. I liked that the cookbook had a lot of pretty basic recipes with ingredients that I usually had on hand or bought often. There were a few ingredients that I just don't like or don't use. I choose to make 4 recipes. I made the Fancy Sweet Potato Fries (page 71), Easy Oven BBQ Chicken (page 133), Tender Baked Meatballs (page 150), and Pecan Crusted Fish (page 203)

My favorite was the Sweet Potato Fries. I love Sweet Potato fries anyways, but this was a little twist on them using garlic and pepper. 

One concern was the variety of servings sizes. Most were anywhere between 4-12 servings. I saw a couple that were as high as 18 and 25, which is great if you are going to make a recipe and freeze part of it or have a party. But when i'm just cooking for myself or myself and my parents, i don't need 6, 8 or 12 servings.

Overall this was a decently good cookbook and i look forward to trying more recipes on my own. I loved that it gave the nutritional information as I can plug that in to Weight Watchers and figure out how many points a recipe is. 

I give this cookbook 4 stars.

I received a free copy of this cookbook from Revell for the purpose of this review.

Creative Slow-Cooker Meals by Cheryl Moeller

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books.  A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured.  The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between!  Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

Today's Wild Card author is:

Cheryl Moeller

and the book:

Creative Slow-Cooker Meals:
Use Two Slow Cookers for
Tasty and Easy Dinners [Spiral-Bound]

Harvest House Publishers; Spi edition (February 1, 2012)

***Special thanks to Karri James, Marketing Assistant, Harvest House Publishers for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cheryl Moeller is a seasoned mother and a standup comic. She is also a syndicated columnist with her own blog (www.momlaughs.blogspot.com) and contributes monthly to several online parent websites. Cheryl has coauthored two books on marriage with her husband and has written for www.mops.org and Marriage Partnership. Cheryl does comedy for parenting classes, MOPS groups, wedding or baby showers, church retreats, women’s conferences, and those in line at the grocery store.

Visit the author's website.

SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:

From the celebrated coauthor of The Marriage Miracle comes a new kind of cookbook and a new attitude toward planning meals. With an eye toward the whole menu, not just part of it, columnist Cheryl Moeller teaches cooks to use two crockpots to easily create healthy, homemade dinners.

Don’t worry about your dinner being reduced to a mushy stew. Each of the more than 200 recipes has been taste-tested at Cheryl’s table. Join the Moeller family as you dig into:

• Harvest-time Halibut Chowder
• Salmon and Gingered Carrots
• Mediterranean Rice Pilaf
• Indian Chicken Curry
• Apricot-Pistachio Bread
• Shrimp Creole
• Rhubarb Crisp

... and many more! Perfect for the frazzled mom who never has enough time in the day, Creative Slow-Cooker Meals gives readers more time around the table with delicious, healthy, frugal, and easy meals!

Product Details:

List Price: $14.99

Spiral-bound: 272 pages

Publisher: Harvest House Publishers; Spi edition (February 1, 2012)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0736944915

ISBN-13: 978-0736944915

AND NOW...THE FIFTH CHAPTER (click on pages to enlarge):

My Review:

I’m always on the lookout for good, simple recipes. I love finding recipes that after having tried them, they become family favorites. Having wanted to get my own slow cooker when I moved out, I thought this might be a great way to start. Well, since I’m still at home, my mom and I tried some recipes in her slow cooker, which is around 30 years old. Her’s is a 3 1/2 quart crock pot, so it’s not the standard large crock pot that is found in the stores now. This makes the list of instructions in the beginning of the cookbook very important. The first one on the list is: “Son’t fill your slow cooker more than two-thirds full.” Not only does this affect the cooking of the foods, it also explains why we had a problem cooking the Sausage, Egg, & Cheese Casserole on page 29. Mom started it before going to bed. However, when she woke up in the morning, there was a mess. She had filled the crock pot full, and some of the egg mixture had found its way out of the crock pot and onto the floor.

My mom and I picked our a few recipes and tried the following ones:

Sausage, Egg & Cheese Casserole (page 29)

Herbed Cauliflower (page 97)

Sloppy Joes (page 117)

After trying each of the recipes, I found things I wanted to tweak. The casserole had too much mustard (or maybe we just needed plain mustard, but we only have spicy mustard in the house). I would have loved to mashed the cauliflower so the garlic and pepper mixed with it better (we didn’t use parsley and chives, since we don’t have it in the house). Finally, the sloppy joes were just sweet. I don’t know if that’s more of a regional thing, but that’s not how I grew up eating sloppy joes, so we didn’t care for it like that.

If you haven’t figured out the theme, it was that there were ingredients in each of the recipes that we changed or just don’t have in our house, and aren’t going to buy for just one recipe. This isn’t to say that I won’t try some more recipes in the future, but these aren’t recipes that I will constantly go back to and make.

The purpose of this cookbook is to use two slow cookers to make a nice dinner. But how many households have two slow cookers (unless they have a large one and a small one). Needless to say, I can’t give this cookbook high marks. So I’ll give it 3 stars. For the right person, it could be a great cookbook. But for me, who likes simple meat and potato meals, this wasn’t the right cookbook.





I received this cookbook from First Wild Card blog tours for the purpose of this review.

Allergy Friendly Food for Families: 120 Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Nut-Free, Egg-Free, and Soy-Free Recipes Everyone Will Love

This seemed like an interesting cookbook for families with food allergies. However, upon first glance I was very disappointed. A lot of the ingredients, I would have no idea where to find in my local grocery stores. Now if you have specialty stores or a Whole Foods store near by, then this might be more useful. Also if you have members of your family with multiple food allergies, this also may be helpful. It has recipes that are gluten free, dairy free, nut free, eggs free, and soy free, and any combination of the above. I did like that it was a cookbook for families, and had tips on how to teach your kids about different foods and what to do with them. The cookbook has recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, snacks, and parties.

While I don’t have any food allergies, I have friends and family who do. But unless they know where to find some of the ingredients that are frequently used in here, ones that I have never heard of or never used, this cookbook isn’t going to be of great use to them.

This cookbook comes out in April 2010


I received the galleys of this book free from Net Galley for the purpose of this review.