The Cook's Problem Solver: The Basic Cooking Book Book

This has to be one of the driest books on food I've read. And usually I like anything about food and "devour" any type of book about it. But this one, well, it was a struggle to get through with hardly any little nuggets of goodness in it.

This book is a list of food names and the people and places that inspire them. It's broken down into dinner, breakfast, and lunch and several sub-categories within those categories (i.e. grains, drinks, etc.). Some are brief blurbs of only a few sentences while others encompass a paragraph of information. And at the end, there are several recipes cards for some of the dishes mentioned in the book.

A lot of the stories are really dry and uninteresting. There were just only so many times I could hear that this piece of food was believed to be from such and such place, and that was it. The few that were good were those that expanded a little on the story and gave more background and story type of telling than just a brief sentence with the location. The stories that said it was believed this person did it for their beloved (insert type of person here) were much more engrossing. But sadly, they were far and few between.

The recipe cards were different. They came attached in the book and you could break them out to put them in a recipe card holder. I've not seen a book come with that type of recipe collection like that and I appreciated how it was put together. Although there were only a few I would actually consider making. The organization was also ok, although I thought it weird they started with dinner, then went to breakfast, and then to lunch. It just seemed out of order.

I can't say I'd recommend this book. It just wasn't something I got real excited about and I'm not even going to rip any of the recipe cards out before giving it away. Maybe someone who prefers dictionary types of books would enjoy it more, but it just wasn't for me and it probably wasn't for a reader who would want entertainment value from it.

Chicken A La King & The Buffalo Wing
Copyright 2008
168 pages

Review by M. Reynard 2013

More of my reviews can be found at www.ifithaswords.blogspot.com