Midwest Books - Page 4

Potluck Paradise: Favorite Fare from Church and Community Cookbooks

Rae Katherine Eighmey, Debbie Miller

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Minnesota Historical Society Press Amazon Marketplace: 26 new & used starting at $9.25

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Editorial Review:

Here is the book that answers the age-old question: What should I bring?

Foodies Rae Katherine Eighmey and Debbie Miller combed through hundreds of folksy cookbooks--often spiral-bound or homemade --compiled by groups around the Midwest. Then they tested hundreds of the most popular recipes before winnowing the list to 125 of the tastiest crowd-pleasing dishes: treats such as Swedish Tea Ring, Oven Barbecue Spareribs, Blueberry Buckle, and Party Punch. Recipes are organized by course, so it's as easy as pie for the reader to find the perfect dish for the long community table.

Seven 1950s menus-with-recipes for gatherings such as a Card Party and a Ladies Club Luncheon will help today's savvy host create memorable retro gatherings for friends and family. Food and entertaining lore gleaned from the cookbooks and the authors' recollections of growing up in the Fabulous Fifties transport readers back to a time when shared food and hospitality reigned supreme.

Rae Katherine Eighmey is a food historian who has written several books of recipes and lore, including Hearts and Homes and A Prairie Kitchen (MHS Press). Debbie Miller is a historian and aficionado of community cookbooks who works as a reference specialist at the Minnesota Historical Society. Dave Wood is the author of numerous books about midwestern culture.

Farms And Foods of Ohio: From Garden Gate to Dinner Plate

Marilou K. Suszko

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hippocrene Books Amazon Marketplace: 35 new & used starting at $12.25

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Join Marilou Suszko as she visits her neighbors and invites us to their tables in more than 100 rustic recipes. This fourth in Hippocrene's state series follows in the tradition of its New Jersey and New Hampshire cookbooks to bring more fresh farm fare to its readers. This time we visit the heartland of America and the source of much of the Midwest's healthful produce, journeying to the Buckeye State and exploring family farms such as the Hartzler Family Dairy and the Blue Egg Farm.

Marilou Suszko takes you on a journey throughout Ohio, where you'll meet unique farming personalities dedicated to growing, raising, and preparing wonderful foods to grace your family's table. Join her in the fields, in the barns, and out in the vineyards through these wonderful stories accompanied by delicious recipes that highlight farm-fresh tastes such as Grilled Peaches with Berry Coulis; Spinach, Strawberry and Dill Salad; Caramelized Onion & Sage Frittata; Herb Rubbed Flank Steak; Beer-Braised Lamb Shanks; Pork Chops with Sage Sauce; Raspberry Cream Custard; Chilled Blueberry and Yogurt Soup; and Heirloom Spaghetti Sauce. Treat yourself to a luscious cup of White Hot Chocolate, a warm Multigrain Apple Pecan Scone and a copy of Farms and Foods or Ohio and meet the "locals." Once you know their story, the next Ohio grown apple, fresh farm egg or sliver of farmstead cheese you enjoy will taste extra special.

Chicago Cooks: 25 Years of Chicago Culinary History and Great Recipes from Les Dames d'Escoffier

Amazon Price: $19.80 List Price: $30.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Agate Surrey Amazon Marketplace: 42 new & used starting at $16.93

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Very Good For foodie 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Beatiful book, artwork is great, intro to chapters interesting and informative. Recipes are great, they WORK! Like the menus for the holidays. This one is for seasoned cooks, not for beginners.

Editorial Review:

The past 25 years has seen Chicago transformed from a heartland stronghold of meat and potatoes into a major culinary center. Chicago Cooks chronicles this story through the eyes of the Chicago chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, female leaders in the food and dining world. They tell how the Chicago food scene grew and evolved, touching on landmark restaurants like Charlie Trotter's and Frontera Grill, the rise of ethnic cuisines imported from around the world, and the proliferation of shops, markets, and classes serving the ever more sophisticated home cook. The book also includes a bounty of 75 recipes for entertaining from this unique group of Chicago food authorities, gathered specially for this book.

Prairie Meals & Memories: Living the Golden Rural

Carolyn Hall

Amazon Price: $19.95 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Goldminds Publishing LLC

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Editorial Review:

Early settlers came to a nearly treeless landscape and learned to build houses and fences from the rock buried in their pastures. Buffalo chips and then cow pies substituted for wood in their hearths. The hard working families formed strong communities and passed their land down from generation to generation. The family farm is becoming something of a legend. Few can afford to live, work and raise a family on a small farm these days. Those fortunate enough to have lived it carry the memories and experiences close to their hearts. Prairie Meals and Memories offers a taste of the past, both figuratively in story, and literally with scores of recipes from the days of home style cooking.

Apple Betty and Sloppy Joe: Stirring Up the Past with Family Recipes and Stories

Susan Sanvidge, Diane Sanvidge Seckar, Jean Sanvidge Wouters, Julie Sanvidge Florence

Amazon Price: $14.21 List Price: $18.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wisconsin Historical Society Press Amazon Marketplace: 26 new & used starting at $11.45

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

 “I chuckled all the way through this delightful book. I felt like I was spending a sunny afternoon visiting with the charming Sanvidge sisters as they tell their funny, warm, and wonderful stories about growing up in 1950s Wisconsin. Each recipe evokes family memories (which each sister remembers a little differently . . .) and conjures up a time and place that has become an American icon.”
--Judith Fertig, author of Prairie Home Cooking

 

“From the first page to the last, the mouthwatering recipes and the rich family reminisces drew me in and kept me there, giving me a wonderful serving of the tastes and textures of growing up in Wisconsin.”
--Patty Pinner, author of Sweets

 

Compiled by four sisters and based on their recollections of their childhood in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Apple Betty & Sloppy Joe captures the glow of memories formed while growing up in a midwestern kitchen. From Lemon Meringue Pie to Tomato Soup Cake, from Mom’s Chicken Pie to Grandma Noffke’s Sliced Cucumber Pickles, this charming book features hundreds of recipes (some classic, some quirky), plus dozens of food- and cooking-related anecdotes, memories, humorous asides, and period photos that transport readers back to Mom’s or Grandma’s kitchen, circa 1950. The Sanvidges share a legacy of beloved dishes and food memories that resonate not just for their family, but for readers everywhere who grew up in a small midwestern town--or wish they had. Nostalgic, funny, and warmhearted, Apple Betty & Sloppy Joecelebrates the ways food and food memories link us to our past, and to each other. A delightful gift for food lovers of any generation.

The Last Word on Lefse

Gary Legwold

Amazon Price: $9.95 List Price: $9.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Adventure Publications(MN) Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $2.68

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Little lefse book goes a long way... 4 out of 5 stars.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful.

The Last Word on Lefse is a delightful book that captures an abiding and lasting love of lefse. The book is written with the same casual, familial voice that the people of the Midwest themselves reflect, and the memories and thoughts of several esteemed Iowa and Minnesota lefse-makers are respectfully, if bemusedly, chronicled. I enjoyed the subdued charm and humor of the book, and I was tickled by the lyrics to songs that I had heard as a child at the Nordic Fest in Decorah. The half-dozen or so recipes for lefse were also a welcome addition to this basically pleasing book.

Lefse Lovers Are In For A Treat! 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I picked up this book at my Grandparent's home recently and fell in love with it! Rolled lefse with butter and sugar is a treat that brings on nostalgic memories of childhood - yet while I loved the food, I had no idea how to make it or how it came into being. "The Last Word on Lefse" compiles everything from the history of this Scandinavian food, to funny antedotes from Norweigan-Americans who excel at making the stuff, to corny jokes and songs and, of course, a number of recipies that I am looking forward to trying. I have yet to boil and rice the potatoes for my first batch of lefse, but after reading this book, I can't wait to get cooking and recapture some of my Nordic heritage.

Toast to Omaha: A Cookbook by the Junior League of Omaha

Amazon Price: $19.96 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 9 to 13 days By: Junior League of Omaha Amazon Marketplace: 11 new & used starting at $16.63

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Cheers to this cookbook! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

OK, full disclosure, I was on the cookbook committee, so I am biased. But, we worked very hard and tested each one of these recipes, and they are all excellent! Over 800 recipes were submitted, and only 300 made it.

Here's why I love this cookbook (and why over 10,000 have been sold so far!): I love to cook, and I love my hometown of Omaha - this cookbook combines the best of both worlds. It includes wonderful tidbits about famous (and not-so-famous) Omaha restaurants, plus the recipes are truly gourmet, without being too stuffy. Many current restaurants contributed recipes, which have been fun to try. The photographs and menus from long-closed restaurants have been an interesting look inside Omaha's history. And I've solved the only problem the cookbook presents (display on the coffee table or on my cookbook shelf?) by buying two!

Editorial Review:

The Junior League of Omaha presents Toast to Omaha a beautiful hard cover cookbook featuring 350 tried-and-true recipes from the city's best professional and at-home chefs along with pictures, menus and memorabilia from Omaha's well-loved restaurants. Featuring the original recipe for the Reuben sandwich invented at Omaha's Blackstone Hotel. A perfect gift for your favorite cook or Omaha native.

Home Cookin' with Dave's Mom

Jess Cagle, Dorothy Letterman

List Price: $12.00 By: Pocket Books Amazon Marketplace: 9 new & used starting at $2.47

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Home Cookin' With Dave's Mom 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Here is a book that has all of the recipes of foods that you have enjoyed throughout a babyboomer's lifetime. The chicken casserole is my favorite and it is a standard of mine for now.There are a lot of photographs of the food and nothing is too esoteric.

What a great cookbook! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

What makes this cookbook so nice is that David Letterman's mother is a real down to earth person. Her recipes and those she collected for the book are simple. Dorothy is a cutie and adds little anecdotes and stories from her own childhood as well as when David was growing up. It's homespun fun and a joy to read!

Absolutely Wonderful on Several Levels 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The recipes here, clearly presented (and some photographed) as the real thing for down-home Midwest cooking, are, in my opinion, not the most valuable feature of this book. After all, literally many hundreds of other cookbooks are available.

This cookbook reminds me of Lance Armstrong's book, It's Not About the Bike. In other words, Dave's mom's book is, in my opinion, not mainly about the recipes. Instead, its primary value is that it opens a wonderful window on a charmingly (almost angelically) gracious woman, her children and husband, her beautifully wholesome, decent values, and the Indiana town in which David Letterman was fortunate to have been raised. Some of the photos could almost be Norman Rockwell paintings -- innocent, smiling faces, a delightful come-on-in kitchen with family photos on the refrigerator door.

In short, Dave's mom, Dorothy, shows us how we might wish every kid could grow up, and (sort of, if you leave out some sugar and white flour here and there) how every kid should be able to eat in a near-ideal world.

Photos of five-year-old Dave and his older sister, photos of Dave's mother as a beautiful child and radiant young mom, photos of Dave playing baseball in grade school -- these along with his mom's innocent and wholesome comments, are alone worth the price of the book.

I loved this book partly because my wife and I spent a few years in Dave's part of the US, and partly because my Utah-farm mom and Oklahoma-farm dad raised me and my sister in a similar modest house with similar home cookin' made from similar recipes.

This book will have you wanting to make Dave's mom's meatloaf and cherry pie, so you and your family can dig into it while nostalgically placing yourselves in the clean-cut, simpler times in the small-town America we are in danger of permanently losing.

Editorial Review:

Gathers delicious recipes from the culinary collection of David Letterman's mother, accompanied by down-home humor, warmhearted advice, and photographs from the Letterman family album. Reprint.

A Cook's Guide to Chicago

Marilyn Pocius

Amazon Price: $11.96 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Lake Claremont Press Amazon Marketplace: 21 new & used starting at $2.76

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This is not a cookbook.
It’s a cook’s book!

· Hunting for truffle oil?
· Have a recipe you’d love to try if only you knew where to buy masa harina or garam masala?
· Been meaning to get those knives sharpened?
· Want to visit the exotic markets of Korea or Vietnam without getting on an airplane?
· Interested in tasting the flavor of fresh turmeric, or daring a sniff of the infamous durian?

It’s all right under your nose if you know where to look. A Cook’s Guide to Chicago takes you on a tasty romp through gourmet shops, ethnic supermarkets, chef’s equipment stores, and much more. Follow author Marilyn Pocius as she divulges the shortcuts to finding what you need and introduces you to new worlds of flavor that are waiting just outside your door.

Pocius shares the culinary expertise she acquired in chef school and through years of footwork around the city searching for the perfect ingredients and supplies. Each section includes store listings, cooking tips, and "Top 10 ingredients" lists to give readers a jump start on turning their kitchens into workshops of worldly cuisine. And don’t fret, there are recipes, too.

Where to find everything you need, and lots of things you didn’t know you did!

The Blue Ribbon Country Cookbook

Diane Roupe

Amazon Price: $22.47 List Price: $29.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Thomas Nelson Amazon Marketplace: 29 new & used starting at $8.71

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Nearly 1,000 crowd-pleasing and award-winning recipes presented in an easy, step-by-step format to ensure success for anyone-even beginners.

More than just a comprehensive cookbook, The Blue Ribbon Country Cookbook contains easy-to-follow techniques and detailed explanations that ensure success. Chapters include every type of food, from soups and stews to pies and tarts, and recipes range from traditional favorites to more contemporary dishes such as Fresh Pear Salad with Ginger Dressing and Rosemary Chicken with Red Raspberry Sauce. What makes this book so special is not just the large number of recipes but also the amount of indispensable information that it contains.

An Amazon reviewer explains the book best: "After 16 years of marriage, I was still not able to make some of the dishes my husband's mom did. I never quite got it right. I can now! In her book, Diane taught me the basics of cooking from scratch and now I receive the highest compliment--As Good as Mom's and Grandma's."