There is a resource put out by Everyday Homemaking that I think everyone homeschooling family should take a look at. The Everyday Cooking cookbook by Vicki Bentley is stuffed with quality recipes, tips, and advice for everyone in the family.
Our family received the digital e-book version and immediately browsed through it together.
Everyday Cooking
Right off the bat, I saw some great low carb and Trim Healthy Mama friendly recipes mixed in among the more traditional ones. As you can see from my blog, those types of recipes do interest me, and I was glad to see a bit of coverage by the author.
In the introduction, she shares some time-saving tips for busy families. Next, she gives 2 pages of quick and simple breakfast ideas to feed the family so you don’t resort to repeating the same exact thing every single day.
The next section of the cookbook is the main part – recipes! There are many different recipe categories, including: Appetizers and Dressings, Bread and Grains, Main Dishes & Soups & Sides, and Desserts & Snacks. Once the recipes are done, there are still over 60 pages of content! This is what I mean when I say that this could be used as part of a home ec class.
Further sections include even more recipes, but are divided into the following categories: Homemade Vanilla Extract, Low Carb and Gluten Free Pantry Helpers, Basic Measurements and Helps, Meal Planning and Shopping Hints, Sample Menus and Menu Planning Masters, Basic Cooking Skills Checklist, Basic Kitchen Accessories, Kitchen Equipment, Slow Cookers vs. Pressure Cookers, Pressure Cooker Tips and Favorites, Index of Recipes, and Index of Time-Saving Tips.
Fudge
My daughter and I are chocolholics. It’s true, we can’t go more than a few days without it. Naturally, when I gave my daughter full pick of any recipes from this cookbook to try, she gravitated toward every chocolate-related recipe. Fudge was at the top of her list.
The fudge required us to use a candy thermometer, which is something that I had never even done before, so this was a learning experience for both of us. To our delight, we were able to follow the recipe and make the MOST rich and delicious fudge recipe ever. We followed it exactly this time, but we may try another variation next time like peanut butter or mint fudge.
Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies
The next recipe my daughter wanted to try out was for Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies. Here is where I wish the cookbook had pictures with the recipes, because these cookies look so pretty and even a little bit fancy. This is one recipe that would surely catch the eye of others glancing through the cookbook if they could see what the end product was like. In fact, many people would probably recognize it as a childhood favorite!
We have never made this exact cookie before, so we may be creating new childhood memories and favorites of our own. My daughter was thrilled to use our handheld mixer to make the dough. She made her cookies much larger than what the recipe called for, so they were giant and scrumptious!
She diligently worked through each step by herself. After a small mishap of thinking the oven was preheated when it actually wasn’t, she got back on the right track. The end result looked like this:
Her parents and brothers were appreciative recipients of this dessert, trust me! Next time, we’d better make a double batch so it lasts longer than about 18 hours in this house. 🙂
Final Thoughts
The Everyday Cooking cookbook, by Vicki Bentley, is a terrific resource for families. It could be used as part of a home economics credit. It is a fabulous resource for family-friendly recipes for moms everywhere to use for all occasions. It even makes a good starter cookbook for beginning cooks to learn how to make a few things on their own.
I plan on doing some of the entree recipes with my kids to help them get the hang of it and then have each older kid make one per week for me to lighten my load. The beauty of a large family is being able to all work together, right? I’ve been waiting for this day to come!
If you’re looking for a cookbook with practical, budget-friendly recipes that kids can even learn to make themselves, I highly recommend Everyday Cooking. You can purchase it as a printed version, or save a few dollars and get it as an ebook, which comes as a PDF file.
I did end up printing out the 198 page ebook that we received and placing it into a binder for ease of use while we cooked with it. I can’t wait to try more of the recipes as we’ve only tried one from each section besides desserts. We had to try two desserts, right?
Vicki Bentley says
Thanks so much for the thoughtful review! Your daughter’s cookies look delicious — and anything chocolate is a hit in our house. 🙂 You can see some of the dishes in color photos in the Food album at our Facebook page…I tried to keep the book affordable by limiting photos, but I will keep the photo thing in mind for the future. 🙂 I hope you enjoy cooking together!
Jenn L says
I think that’s a wise idea, especially for the print book, to keep the photos down. I’ll have to check out the photo album on Facebook! That will help my younger kids in deciding what to cook together next. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by!
Tajuana Rhodes says
Loved your idea about putting the e-cookbook in a binder. I need to do that with mine so I’ll have it handy when time to meal plan and cook. I love chocolate too. It makes everything better 😀