Reviews for Recipe For A Balanced Mom - An Inspirational Cookbook

The average rating for Recipe For A Balanced Mom - An Inspirational Cookbook based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-10-20 00:00:00 Sarah Atkinson The book cover says...."A portrait of American food - before the national highway system, before chain restaurants, and before frozen food, when the nation's food was seasonal, regional, and traditional". I was expecting a light read, with some humor thrown in - and I was blown away. At the height of the Depression, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was developed to put many of America's jobless to work doing things such as building parks (Eagle Point Park with gorgeous Frank Lloyd inspired architectural pavilions and ponds in Dubuque, Iowa)or painters such as Grant Wood (American Gothic) who has huge murals painted in the Iowa State Library, and many other creative projects to preserve America's rich history. One of the projects the WPA started was the Federal Writers' Project to help record and preserve for history the regional and ethnic foods that someone had the foresight to see were going to change, or disappear altogether with the increasingly easy transportation and influx of new ideas from different areas of the US and the world. The book is broken down into regional areas and features short vignettes written about foods, food customs, recipes, and how they played a social role in a time now long past. Many of the short essays were written by authors who went on to become famous, others were written by average writers who simply had a tale to tell. What came out of it is a book that literally transports you back in time and enriches your sense of history in a very real way. Some of the foods talked about made my mouth water with anticipation, others made me cringe, but all showed just how much we've lost in the last century with the shift to frozen and shelf-ready standardized foods as well as the limited choices in drive-ins and chain restaurants. Many people have lost the knowledge and the eagerness of delayed gratification of biting into the first fruits and vegetables of a given season and the recipes that sprang from them, the delight of the special recipes that only a neighbor could make for the town festival, and the richness of choice and taste that came from each region's way of using what was produced close to home. This book is a time transporter. Don't miss a chance to take the trip!

Review # 2 was written on 2013-11-20 00:00:00 Steve Phelps Hot dog, this book was fun! It uses documents from the Federal Writer's Program(part of the WPA) to document regional American cooking after canning was introduced, but before fast food and frozen tv dinners became a way of life. I wish this book has been published before my father died. The first sections after the introduction are about Vermont and my father was born in Bennington in 1929. This is the food he grew up with. I remember him describing butternuts and stopped at elderly ladies' homes who sold Victorian style dinners from their living rooms. He said one winter night, on Valentine Street, when it was snowing, he say a man in a sleigh pulled by a horse. That was a rare sight, but it still happened. Several of the dishes were really interesting and I would like to know how to cook them in modern kitchens. The Vermont picked pumpkin and pickled butternut recipes looked especially appealing. I wish I knew how the "Spanish" of the Southwest cooked their dried vegetables(esp pumpkin and cucumber). Lastly, I would like to know how to make the sourdough pancakes that show up over and over again. There were all sorts of lost flavors I would like to try. I have never tasted a native persimmon and have only seen the Asian varieties for sale. My father used to hunt pheasant in Pennsylvania, which apparently was popular in Nebraska, but I have never tasted it. There were plenty of other things that I am glad we have left behind, or are trying to. The extreme racism in the Southern sections turned my stomach. There was also a condescension and hostility towards outsiders epitomized in Eudora Welty's essay that I disliked. Men seemed to work very hard at proving they were men(see the multiple entries about `oysters'). There were long descriptions of Native American food traditions and the America of days gone by had a lot more seafood. New England ate more vegetables than I imagined. There were several dinners and suppers listed that were either vegetarian or used very little meat.