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The Mother Goose Cookbook

The Mother Goose Cookbook by Frances Sheridan Goulart, 1970.

I remember reading this book from my local library when I was a kid, and I had to look it up again because there were a couple of things that stuck in my mind about it. First, the recipes in this book are also based on songs and fairy tales, not just nursery rhymes, and second, while there are other cookbooks that use nursery rhymes and fairy tales as themes, this one chooses some of the more unusual ones. There are some common rhymes and references in the book, like using Humpty Dumpty for an egg recipe and referencing Little Miss Muffet for Curds and Whey, but there also less common ones, like Aiken Drum. Overall, I liked the variety of nursery rhyme and fairy tale references in the book, and I think the recipes generally fit the references well.

Second, some of the recipes sound a bit fancy for a child’s cookbook, but as a kid, I found them intriguing because they had a kind of old-fashioned quality that I thought made them seem more like nursery rhyme and fairy tale foods. Because, as a kid, I rarely ever had the patience to read the introductions to books before plunging right in, I missed some of the historical information behind some of these recipes and rhymes that the book explains in its introduction. Rereading this as an adult, though, I really appreciated the thought that the author put into the history of food in nursery rhymes.

The introduction begins by posing the question that many children have asked when hearing or reading nursery rhymes, “What are curds and whey, anyway?” I certainly wondered that when I was a kid, and the book notes that many parents also don’t know the answer. It goes on to explains that the “Mother Goose Era” (not really defined but probably the era when the rhymes were first composed) spans roughly from 1600 to 1800, and the foods mentioned in the rhymes is a mixture of real foods and imaginary ones. The author researched real, historical recipes and adapted them for modern use, while trying to remain as faithful as possible to the original nature of the dishes. In the cases where the author couldn’t find information about the dishes or where the foods mentioned seem to be imaginary, she created original recipes to represent them.

Although the author intends this book for children, I personally thought that the nature of some of the recipes and the difficulty of some of them make them more suitable to nostalgic adults.

The recipes in the book are sorted in alphabetical order, skipping a few letters of the alphabet that they didn’t have recipes to match. Each of the recipes is accompanied by a pen-and-ink picture of the nursery rhymes or fairy tale connected to the recipe, and the pictures are on backgrounds of varying shades of purple and light green.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

The recipes in the book are:

A is for:

Aiken Drum’s Glum Gallimaufry – This is a kind of stew made with mutton and vegetables, one of the dishes that I would think more suitable to an adult than a child. Stews in general aren’t too hard if you start with pre-chopped meat and veggies, but I don’t think many modern children are accustomed to eating mutton or would be interested in doing so. At least, in the United States, mutton isn’t a very common food.

B is for:

Betty Pringle’s Pastry Pigs

Bubble and Squeak, a la Bo-Peep – This is a dish made with lamb and cabbage.

C is for:

Cock Robin en Cocotte – I never liked this rhyme, and the recipe is for cooking small poultry.

Curds and Whey, One Way – It doesn’t precisely define what “Curds and Whey” are, but it’s a dairy dish made with soured milk and oatmeal.

Curds and Whey, Another Way – There’s a second method for making it.

D is for:

Daffy-Down-Dilly’s Jolly Jelly

Dappled Grey’s Farthing-a-Mare Gingerbread

E is for:

Elsie Marley’s Nine O’Clock Barley

F is for:

The Fatted Figs from Budleigh Fair – This one asks you to fry figs in fritter batter, but it doesn’t give you the recipe for the batter.

Four-and-Twenty Blackbird Pye – This is another recipe that I think only an adult might try. The “blackbirds” are made from beef liver.

G is for:

Good Pulled Bread for Tommy Tucker

H is for:

Hickory Dickory Flummery – A flummery is a type of old-fashioned dessert.

I is for:

Intery Mintery Cutery Corn

J is for:

Jack-a-Dandy Kissing Candy – This is a very old-fashioned candy – candied rose petals and violets. I think I have had candied flowers at a living history museum, but I’m not sure where to get the rose petals and violets to make any myself.

Jack and Jill Johnnycakes – This recipe is accompanied by a vinegar pudding sauce.

K is for:

King Arthur’s Bag Pudding en Croute

King Boggen’s Three-Farthing Turnips

L is for:

Little Betty Botter’s Better Butter Batter – This is a shortbread recipe

L’Orangerie St. Clemens

M is for:

Margery Daw, Petit Pois – This is a dish of peas, but there’s a little game as a twist. You add either a corn kernel or a small onion to the peas, and whoever gets the corn or onion on their plate has good luck.

O is for:

Oeufs a la Humpty Dumpty – “Oeufs” is the French word for eggs. This recipe wants you to serve it with Bechamel sauce, but there’s no recipe for the sauce.

P is for:

Pease Porridge Chaud-Froid – This porridge is made with oatmeal instead of peas.

Peter’s Pickled Peppers

Pippin Hill Ladyfingers – This is a dessert made with apples.

Punch and Judy Rolling Pin Pie – This is an apple pie recipe.

Q is for:

Queen of Heart’s Purloined Tarts – These are heart-shaped cherry tarts.

R is for:

Rowly Powly’s Roly-Poly – The name of this rhyme is unfamiliar to me, but I know a variation of it under the name Georgie Porgie.

S is for:

A Salamagundi for Solomon Grundy – This is a dish with potatoes, carrots, and onions.

St. Dunstan’s Belfry Bacon

St. Swithin’s Rainwater Tea – This is a recipe for an herbal tea made with actual rain water. I’m not sure that I would recommend people actually gathering and drinking rain water, but the herbal tea sounds nice, and this section does explain a little about St. Swithin and the tradition behind the rhyme that goes with it.

Simple Simon’s Ha’Penny Buns

Slitherum Slatherum Soul Cakes – I was fascinated by the recipe for Soul Cakes, an old tradition from Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. The book says that they should be made on the eve before All Souls Day (evening of November 1) rather than Halloween. However, from my earlier Halloween research, I know that different countries and regions had their own traditions and their own recipes for Soul Cakes. There is no single, universal recipe for Soul Cakes.

T is for:

Three Men in a Tub Pommes de Terre – This is basically a recipe for french fries, using three potatoes soaked in a tub of ice water before being fried in hot fat. (The book doesn’t explain why, but I know that doing that makes them crispier.)

Tuppeny Rice – This is a sweet rice dish made with cinnamon and sugar and marmalade.

Tweedle Dee’s Dumplings a Deux – These dumplings include cow’s liver.

W is for:

Willy Wood’s Wondrous Pennyloaves

Y is for:

Yankee Doodle’s Pepperbox Noodles

Z is for:

“sleeping after all this good eating!”

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Raggedy Ann and Andy’s Cookbook

Raggedy Ann and Andy’s Cookbook by Nika Hazelton, 1975.

This children’s cookbook is inspired by the classic Raggedy Ann and Andy stories, and the recipes are accompanied by illustrations from the original books and quotes from the stories. I think the concept is charming, although I noticed that the quotes included with the recipes don’t always match what the recipes actually are. I think that’s because the author decided to include recipes that don’t relate to the stories directly. For example, the quote included with one of the recipes for breakfast cereal is about sausages, and there is no recipe that includes sausages in the chapter of breakfast recipes.

That being said, I thought that the book had an interesting selection of recipes. Some of the recipes are classics, like pancakes, different types of sandwiches, chicken, meatloaf, and some easy desserts. Some recipes are a little old-fashioned, like the one that is designed for an electric frying pan. I haven’t seen electric frying pans for years, and I’m not sure if people still use them. Other recipes in the book strike me as being very mid-20th century in style, such as the salads that contain some mixtures of ingredients that I think 21st century children might find odd. I noticed that the recipe for baked onions has a note that this might be a treat “for your Daddy or Mommy”, a sort of acknowledgement that an adult might enjoy a baked onion more than a kid would, although the recipe is easy enough for a kid to do, baking the onions alongside baked potatoes.

The book begins with a short chapter about cooking tips, and I was surprised by the instructions for cleaning fish that were included later in the book, with the assumption that kids might be helping to cook fish that they actually caught. It is logical that some kids might actually go fishing and catch fish, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cookbook for children with that assumption or those instructions. Most seem to assume that kids are using store-bought ingredients for their recipes.

The main chapters of the book are:

Beautiful Breakfasts

The recipes included in this chapter are:

  • Two recipes for making your own breakfast cereal
  • Cinnamon Toast
  • Pancakes
  • Baked Ham
  • Nest Egg
  • Electric Frying Pan Breakfast – I don’t know if people use electric frying pans anymore. I’ve seen them before but not for a long time. The breakfast included in this recipe is for bacon, eggs, and toast.

Lovely Lunches

The recipes included in this chapter are:

  • Cheese and Apple Sandwiches
  • Cream Cheese and Berry Sandwiches
  • Ham, Lettuce, and Cheese Sandwich
  • Stuffed Pita Pocket – The filling is cucumber, tomato, lettuce, and cheese.
  • Savory Cheese and Bread Pudding
  • Baked Cheesy Eggs

Super Salads

The recipes included in this chapter are:

  • Raggedy Ann Salad – This salad is meant to be shaped like Raggedy Ann’s face, with a canned peach half for the head, raisins for eyes, a piece of pepper for a nose, pimiento for the mouth, and grated carrot for hair.
  • Tossed Green Salad
  • French Dressing
  • Carrot, Apple and Raisin Salad
  • Tomato Salad
  • Guacamole Salad
  • Cucumber Galleons – Cucumbers are cut and decorated to look like boats with lettuce for sails.

Scrumptious Suppers

The recipes included in this chapter are:

  • Corn Chowder
  • French Onion Soup
  • Rice
  • Roast Corn
  • Corn Fritters
  • Green Peas with Bacon
  • How to clean and cook a small fish
  • Oven-fried Chicken Legs
  • Baked Chicken
  • Hand-mixed Meat Loaf
  • How to Make an Oven-cooked Dinner for a Friend
  • Baked Potato
  • Baked Onion
  • Oven Hamburgers
  • How to Make a Spaghetti Dinner for Four
  • Tomato Sauce
  • Spaghetti
  • Italian Bread Sticks

Delectable Desserts

The recipes included in this chapter are:

  • Baked Apple
  • Smores
  • Yoghurt-and-Fruit
  • Dessert Ladyfinger Sandwiches
  • Hot Bananas
  • Frozen Bananas and More Frozen Bananas
  • Chocolate Bar Mousse
  • Lemon Gelatin
  • Elegant Melon Dessert
  • Gingerbread Men
  • Three Hole Chocolate Cake
  • Brownies

Terrific Treats

The recipes included in this chapter are:

  • Ice Cream Soda and Super Ice Cream Soda
  • Thick Milk Shake
  • Honey Sauce for Ice Cream
  • Boston Cooler
  • Strawberry Ice-Cubes Milk
  • Fruit Candy Treats
  • Party Punch
  • Chocolate Raisins
  • Popcorn Party
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Kirsten’s Cookbook

Kirsten, An American Girl

Kirsten’s Cookbook by Terri Braun, Jodi Evert, and Jeanne Thieme, 1994.

This cook book is one of the activity books that was written to accompany the Kirsten series that is part of the American Girls franchise. The American Girls books were written to help teach American history (as well as sell the accompanying dolls and accessories), so this book has recipes of the type that people would have eaten on the American frontier during the mid-1800s, when the character of Kirsten lived, and some historical information.

The book begins with some historical information about cooking on the frontier. Pioneer families like Kirsten’s family ate what they grew themselves and things they could gather from the woods around them. They ate certain foods only in the season when they could get them, and it was hard work to produce food and process it before using it in recipes. There were certain types of food that they had often because the ingredients were simple and often available, like potatoes and bread, and they rarely had time to prepare special or elaborate meals. However, they would take the time to make some special treats for holidays.

There are special sections that describe what pioneer kitchens were like and the dishes and table settings they would use. Pioneer families like Kirsten’s lived in one-room cabins, so her family cooked, ate, and slept all in that one room. They had a wood-burning cookstove, but stoves like that did not come with temperature settings. (This is why you don’t see temperatures specified in old recipes from the 19th century, although this book does include that information for modern readers.) People learned to judge roughly whether the temperature was right to bake bread or cook other recipes by feel, and could regulate the approximate temperature through the type or amount of wood they burned.

There is also a section of cooking tips and kitchen safety tips for modern child readers. Then, the recipes are organized by type of meal with a section of Kirsten’s favorite recipes. Each section and recipe is accompanied with additional historical information and trivia.

Breakfast

  • Pork sausage patties
  • Hard-boiled eggs
  • Swedish rice porridge
  • Round rye bread
  • Homemade butter
  • Ginger cookies – Although cookies seem like an odd thing to see at breakfast, a pioneer family might have them and save some for a snack in the mid-morning, before lunch, or as they called it, dinner.

Dinner

“Dinner” is usually the biggest meal of the day, but depending on when and where you live, that might be either the midday meal or the evening meal. In modern times, it tends to be the evening meal, after a family or individuals are home from work or school and have more time for a large meal. Modern people sometimes use the terms “dinner” and “supper” (the evening meal) interchangeably for that reason. In Kirsten’s time and, sometimes, in rural areas even in modern times, the biggest meal is the midday meal, what most of us would call “lunch.”

  • Baked ham slice
  • Swedish potatoes
  • Cabbage and apple salad
  • Fruit Soup
  • Swedish Almond Rusks – Swedish rusks are crunchy sweet breads, a little like biscotti.

Favorite Foods

This section just has an assortment of recipes for Kirsten’s favorite foods. Some of them are traditional Swedish foods, and others are more American. There is a mention in this section that pioneers learned how to make maple syrup from “Indians”, meaning Native Americans.

  • Potato soup – Soup with bread and cheese was a popular supper meal for farming families in the 19th century.
  • Swedish meatballs
  • Fresh applesauce
  • Swedish pancakes – These thin pancakes are rolled and filled with jam.
  • St. Lucia buns – These special buns are topped with raisins, and it’s a tradition in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries to serve them on St. Lucia Day, December 13.
  • Pepparkakor cookies – These are thin, spicy cookies that are cut into shapes and served at Christmas.

The book ends with a section of tips for having a pioneer-themed party. When real pioneers had parties, they were often organized around chores they had to do or tasks to accomplish. They called these work-play parties “bees”. Besides accomplishing a task, friends and neighbors would also bring food and share a meal, talk, and have fun. The suggestions in this section are organized seasonally. A Winter Baking Bee could involve everyone getting together to bake holiday treats, like the ones included in this book for St. Lucia Day and Christmas, or whatever the guests want to bake. At a Spring Gardening Bee, guests can get together to plant a garden or potted plants, with plants for guests to take home themselves. For a Summer Berry Bee, guests can pick berries (if they grow locally or at a “pick-your-own” farm) or make jam, with some for everyone to take home. For a Fall Apple Bee, guests can pick apples and make recipes with apples, like applesauce.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

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Samantha’s Cookbook

Samantha, An American Girl

Samantha’s Cookbook by Polly Athan, Terri Braun, Jodi Evert, and Jeanne Thieme, 1994, 1998.

This cook book is one of the activity books that was written to accompany the Samantha series that is part of the American Girls franchise. The American Girls books were written to help teach American history (as well as sell the accompanying dolls and accessories), so this book has recipes of the type that people would have eaten during the early 1900s, when the character of Samantha lived, and some historical information about cooking and dining during that period.

The first section in the book discusses innovations that made cooking easier in Samantha’s time than it had been in earlier time periods. The kitchen in Samantha’s house had running water, a gas stove, and an icebox for refrigerating food. Because Samantha comes from a wealthy family, who can hire people to cook for them, Samantha’s education focuses more on learning how to be a good hostess, meaning that she would be more likely to be in the dining room, helping to entertain guests, rather than in the kitchen, preparing food. However, Samantha would have been familiar with cookbooks, discussing new recipes and studying sections of cookbooks that offered advice about dining etiquette. There are sections in this book that discuss the role of servants in shopping for and preparing food and the proper way to set a table for an elegant dinner party.

After that, there is a section of cooking tips and kitchen safety tips. The recipes in the book are divided into sections based on meals, followed by a section of Samantha’s favorite recipes. The recipes are also accompanied by historical information.

Breakfast

The book explains that, because Samantha is from a wealthy family, her family’s cook begins making breakfast before Samantha wakes up in the morning, so it will be ready for her as soon as she’s awake and dressed. In her time, breakfast was typically the lightest meal of the day, but wealthy households had a variety of foods at breakfast. Breakfast was typically served with hot drinks. Adults usually had coffee or tea, while children might have hot chocolate.

  • Strawberries with cream
  • Ham slice
  • Cheese omelet
  • Saratoga potatoes – These are fried potato chips, which were a relatively new innovation in Samantha’s time. The book explains that potato chips were invented by a Native American cook at a resort in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1853 after a customer complained that the fried potatoes should be thinner.
  • Blueberry muffins

Dinner

“Dinner” is usually the biggest meal of the day, but depending on when and where you live, that might be either the midday meal or the evening meal. In the past and in rural areas, “dinner” was often lunch. By Samantha’s time, as it typically is in modern times, it was the evening meal, after a family or individuals are home from work or school and have more time for a large meal. For wealthy families, like Samantha’s family, dinner was a very formal meal. They would often dress up for dinner, and at formal dinner parties, there would be name cards on the table to tell everyone where to sit. At a formal dinner in a household with servants, individual dishes and parts of the meal would be served in “courses”, but the number of courses could vary. Samantha’s family followed the English style, with fives courses at dinner. The book mentions Samantha’s family having soup, salad, appetizers, a main course with roasted meat, and dessert and coffee at the end of the meal. Some larger, fancier dinner parties could have many more, some as many as 18 courses!

  • Cream of carrot soup
  • Roasted beef tenderloin
  • Mashed potatoes
  • Fresh green beans
  • Corn oysters – These are fried corn patties.
  • French salad
  • Dressing
  • Ice cream snowballs – These are scoops of vanilla ice cream coated in shredded coconut.

Favorite Foods

This section has an assortment of recipes for Samantha’s favorite foods. The book explains that, while Samantha was being trained to be a hostess more than a cook, even wealthy girls like her would taught some basic cooking skills. Sometimes, Samantha would help the family’s cook in the kitchen and make some simple recipes.

  • Apple Brown Betty
  • Jelly biscuits
  • Cream cheese and walnut sandwiches
  • Chicken salad sandwiches
  • Gingerbread
  • Lemon ice

The book ends with a section about how to plan a tea party, like girls in Samantha’s time might have. The suggestions include themed tea parties, like afternoon tea, a color tea (a popular concept in the early 1900s, where everything at the party, from decorations to food, would be themed around a particular color), a garden tea party, and a doll tea party (girls would bring their dolls, and there would even be tiny treats to serve to the dolls).

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

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The Boxcar Children Cookbook

The Boxcar Children

The Boxcar Children Cookbook by Diane Blain, 1991.

This book is a companion to The Boxcar Children series, written years after the original series by a different author. Most of these recipes weren’t included with the original books in the series, but the books often mention food. The children in the stories are often eating foods they like or demonstrating that they can prepare their own food. In particular, the youngest of the children, Benny, likes to eat.

The first part of the book discusses kitchen equipment, measurements, and safety rules. The recipes in the book are organized by types of dishes. There is even a section about cooking over a campfire because the children camp out in multiple books. Each of the recipes explains which story in the series mentioned that type of food. The books that the cookbook references are all part of the original 19 Boxcar Children books written by Gertrude Chandler Warner, not the later ones written by ghost writers under her name.

None of the recipes are very difficult because they’re meant for children, but they’re not overly easy, either.

The section about beverages includes recipes for hot chocolate mix, strawberry milkshakes, lemonade, eggnog, and an orange drink. The breads section includes a recipe based on one that appeared in The Snowbound Mystery, which was a secret recipe for buns. However, the recipe in this book includes a shortcut using prepared sweet roll dough from the grocery store.

The breakfast section includes recipes for pancakes, French toast, and different types of eggs. I thought it was interesting that the page about hot cereals not only included recipes for oatmeal and cream of wheat, which are common ones but grits, hasty pudding, and cream of rice, which I had never heard of before.

There are sections for sandwiches and main dishes. There is also a section about salads and vegetables for side dishes.

The section about campfire cooking includes instructions for building a campfire and safety rules. There are also grill instructions.

Finally, there are sections for cookies, cakes and desserts. I think the cookbook is a fun way to add activities to accompany the stories. Cooking is a valuable learning experience, and many people like to experience foods similar to the ones that characters in their favorite stories enjoy.

The illustrations in the book are in silhouette form, like the illustrations from the very first Boxcar Children book, but they’re not exactly the same. Some of them have been changed to fit the recipes in the book, with characters holding foods that they weren’t holding in the original illustrations.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

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Addy’s Cook Book

Addy, An American Girl

Addy’s Cook Book by Rebecca Sample Bernstein, Terri Braun, Tamara England, and Jodi Evert, 1994.

This cook book is one of the activity books that was written to accompany the Addy series that is part of the American Girls franchise. The American Girls books were written to help teach American history (as well as sell the accompanying dolls and accessories), so this book has recipes of the type that people would have eaten during the American Civil War, when the character of Addy lived, and some historical information.

The book begins with sections of historical information about African Americans, kitchens, and table settings in the 1860s. It describes the lives of slaves and explains how they were given basic rations of food which they could supplement and extend by producing or gathering some food of their own, such as vegetables they grew or fish they caught themselves. When they managed to escape from slavery, they had to depend on help from others, such as churches or abolitionists, until they became established in their new lives. When they were able, many of them provided help to others who were in the same position. (This was a topic covered in the Addy books.)

The types of kitchens they used depended on where they were living. As slaves, Civil War era African Americans would do their cooking in small fireplaces attached to the small cabins where they lived. Because they needed the fire for cooking, they kept it burning all the time, even in hot weather. Free African Americans had more options. Depending on their living arrangements, they might have a stove for their cooking, or if they lived in a boarding house, they might be provided with meals as part of their boarding, paid for along with the rent on their rooms.

The recipes in the book are divided into three sections: breakfast, dinner, and favorite foods. There is a section with some general cooking tips, but there are other cooking tips and pieces of historical information included along with the recipes. Some information that I found particularly useful explains why some historical recipes can be confusing to read. Because some people were using cooking fires and some were using stoves, 19th century recipes can have vague-sounding instructions like “fry until golden brown” instead of specific cooking times and temperatures. It was also common for people to cook favorite dishes from memory instead of following written recipes. People learned to cook from their elders, and they just continued doing what parents and grandparents always did when they cooked. The book doesn’t mention it, but this style of cooking also continued into the 20th century, so even when people wrote down recipes, they might seem vague or incomplete to modern readers. It was like that with recipes that my grandmother and great-grandmother wrote down, too. They were accustomed to making certain recipes mostly from memory, and they didn’t feel obligated to write down every little step, assuming that anyone who read it would already know how to make that kind of dish and would just need a few reminders about amounts. Fortunately, the recipes in this book are all written with detailed, modern instructions and include cooking times and oven temperatures.

The book explains that poor people during the Civil War didn’t usually have much for breakfast because they had to rise early and get to work. Most mornings, they might have some leftovers from the previous night or some simple hot foods, like buttermilk biscuits and hominy grits, a traditional Southern breakfast food made from corn (my grandmother said that she had it when she was growing up on a farm in Indiana, too). As a special treat, they might have scrambled eggs or sausage and gravy.

The dinner section includes main dishes, like fried fish, and side dishes, like hush puppies. A particular recipe that gets extra attention is Hoppin’ John, a rice dish with black-eyed peas and bacon. Hoppin’ John is special because it’s a dish traditionally served at New Year’s Day.

The section of favorite foods include chicken shortcake, a few other side dishes, and a few special treats, including peach cobbler and shortbread. I’ve tried the shortbread recipe, and I like it. It’s easy to make and includes only a few ingredients, and it’s really good. It does contain a lot of butter, so it’s just an occasional treat.

The book ends with a section of advice for planning an Emancipation party. It explains how people celebrated when the Emancipation Proclamation was read publicly on December 31, 1862, having been transmitted to communities by telegraph. Children played games like Novel Writers (which is a story-writing game similar to Consequences) and Blindman’s Buff. The book also describes the origins of Juneteenth – slaves in Texas were freed on June 19th, 1865, about two and half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

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The Fun of Cooking

The Fun of Cooking by Jill Krementz, 1985.

This cookbook was designed not only for children but includes real children making their favorite recipes, sometimes by themselves and sometimes with the help of their parents. The author, Jill Krementz, was also a photographer, and she photographed the children as they cooked. (Another interesting fact is that Jill Krementz was also married to Kurt Vonnegut, until his death. It’s not directly related to this book at all, just a fun fact.)

The recipes in the book aren’t arranged in any particular order, going back and forth between main dishes and desserts of various kinds. Some of the children included recipes for entire meals that included both main dishes and a dessert.

The children themselves are a range of ages from six to sixteen. The older children tend to make more complex dishes or meals, and the younger ones tend to make simpler ones, although even the younger children can make complex dishes with the help of their parents or grandparents. One girl, Michele, has a father who is a professional chef, and she says that it’s her ambition to be a chef, too. She and her father are shown making spaghetti together in the kitchen of his restaurant.

The children all seem to live in or around New York City, where the author lived, and they are from a variety of backgrounds. There are two girls who mention that they are Jewish, including the girl who makes matzo ball soup with her grandmother. There are also two black girls, and one boy with Greek ancestry. Not all of the children have obvious backgrounds like this, but I thought it was interesting where it was noticeable. I think that having a variety of children with different ages and backgrounds was a good idea because it could help many young readers to identify with different types of children.

I also liked the fact that there were both boys and girls cooking their favorite recipes. Not only did Michele cook a recipe with her father, but there are other fathers in the book, helping with the cooking, too. One of the boys makes dog biscuits for his dog with his father, and he comments, “I think men should cook the same as girls.” It’s nice to see cooking characterized as something that anyone can enjoy doing, both men and women, as well as children of different ages.

One of the cutest recipes is one for making loaves of bread shaped like teddy bears.

One of my favorite recipes was the one for pumpkin pie. I’ve made pumpkin pie from a whole pumpkin like this before, and it’s a lot of work, but it’s fun! The girl making the pie also roasts the pumpkin seeds.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

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Kids Cooking

Kids Cooking: A Very Slightly Messy Manual by the editors of Klutz Press, 1987.

This book is part of the classic children’s hobby and activity series from Klutz Press. Originally, this book came with a set of plastic measuring spoons, which was attached to the book at the hole in the upper left corner.

The recipes in the cookbook are listed in categories by the type of meal: breakfasts, lunches and snacks, dinners and salads, and desserts. There is also a section of recipes for non-edible things, like play dough and finger paint.

The food recipes are fairly simple, but not the overly-simple, boring recipes that I’ve seen in some children’s books, like how to make a peanut butter sandwich.

Kids can make these recipes, but they’re not for little kids who are still at the level of learning to make their own basic sandwiches. They do involve things like using stoves and ovens and chopping ingredients with a sharp knife. It’s common in the book to include “grown-up assistant with knife” under the list of ingredients and tools needed for recipes.

Some of the recipes in the book include multiple ways to cook something, variations on popular foods or different ways of seasoning a dish. For example, the breakfast section explains different ways to cook eggs, including scrambled eggs, fried eggs, soft or hard boiled eggs, and eggs in a frame.

There are different ways of cooking potatoes in the dinner section, and I also like the popcorn variations in the snack section, which include different ways to flavor popcorn with cheese or peanut butter.

The dessert section includes brownies (“Disgustingly Rich”), chocolate chip cookies, and some more unusual desserts, like frozen bananoids, which are pieces of banana covered in chocolate and frozen.

The section of non-edible recipes also includes a recipe for dog biscuits, Fido’s Fabulous People Crackers. They’re edible for dogs, just not something people would enjoy.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Children’s Quick and Easy Cook Book

Children’s Quick and Easy Cook Book by Angela Wilkes, 1997.

When I was expanding my cooking skills as an adult, I started doing it using children’s cookbooks instead of cookbooks for adults because of the simplified instructions. When I bought this one, I hadn’t realized that it was originally a British book. I have the American edition, but the reason why I discovered that it was a British book is that the types of recipes the book offers includes some that are more common in the UK than in the US. A friend of my family, who was originally from England, spotted it and was happy to hear that I’d be learning to make some of these recipes. The recipes provide both metric and imperial measurements for the ingredients (another clue that this is an international book). There is a section in the beginning of the book that explains how to use the book and some general cooking safety tips. In the back of the book, there is a helpful Picture Glossary that demonstrates various cooking techniques and concepts used in the book, like how to use a marinade, how to core an apple, how to separate eggs, and how to roll out pastry. It’s all useful information for beginning-level cooks.

The recipes are divided into helpful sections, including snacks, meals, desserts, and sweets. The book is heavy on desserts, candy, and sweets, but many of the recipes under the snacks section are what Americans (and possibly British people, too, although I’m less sure there) might consider as breakfasts, lunches, and general light meals. In particular, the snack section includes sandwiches of various kinds. Some of the ingredients for the sandwiches sound uncommon for the US, although that might also vary by region. I can’t recall seeing salami and cream cheese together before, but I wouldn’t mind trying it sometime. Some sandwiches also call for ingredients like cherry compote and mango chutney. I think that serving grated chocolate on croissants or other bread items is also a European thing. I’ve seen it packaged just for that purpose at international grocery stores and import stores. Some of the snacks are more like snack items in American cook books, like flavored popcorn and smoothies.

The section of Speedy Meals include omelets, two kinds of soup, tacos, and pasta. Some recipes are common ones in the US, too, like chicken nuggets, chicken burgers, and fish sticks. The Turkish Meatballs with lamb, Falafel, Tabbouleh, and Chicken Curry and Rice are less common, but are still eaten here, especially if you live in areas with international restaurants and grocery stores.

Of course, the desserts and sweets are particularly fun recipes. I particularly enjoyed making the cream puffs! There are different types of cookies included and candies like chocolate truffles and peppermint creams.

Many of the desserts would be familiar to Americans, like the chocolate cake, carrot cake, lemon cheesecake, and Baked Alaska. However, there were also a few desserts that were new to me. I had never heard of Clafouti before, and this was the first place I had heard of Knickerbocker Glories, a kind of parfait or sundae with layers of ice cream and fruit. (If you remember Harry Potter referring to a Knickerbocker Glory in one of the books, here is what it is!)

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The Sleepover Cookbook

The Sleepover Cookbook by Hallie Warshaw, 2000.

This cookbook has easy recipes that kids can make with their friends at sleepovers, parties, or anytime they want to eat together and include cooking as an activity. Some of the recipes are made from scratch, and some include shortcuts, like using pre-packaged pie dough and crescent roll dough.

The recipes are divided into sections with two sections devoted to snacks, Starter Snacks and Sacktime Snacks (bedtime snacks). There are other sections for meals – dinners, breakfasts, and brunch or lunch. There is also one extra section for birthday treats. The introduction to the book says that it isn’t really important when readers use the recipes – if you want to use a starter snack as a bedtime snack or eat a dinner recipe for breakfast, it’s all up to you. The sections are just to make it easier to find certain types of recipes.

As expected in a book of sleepover recipes, there are plenty of sugary treats, but there is one specifically “healthy” recipe for each section in the book, marked by a heart in the table of contents. The snacks include traditional kid favorites like cookies, popcorn balls, and s’mores. However, even some of the recipes that aren’t specifically labeled “healthy” are still non-sugary, like guacamole and hot taco dip.

The meal recipes also include many popular favorites. Dinner recipes include chicken pot pie, taco salad, spaghetti and meatballs, and homemade pizza. Breakfast recipes include cream cheese and ham omelettes, chocolate chip muffins, and banana nut French toast. Lunch recipes include tuna melts (called Tuna Meltdowns), bow-tie pasta salad, chicken veggie sticks (kebabs), and turkey burgers.

The section of birthday treats has recipes for different types of cakes and a few non-cake treats like brownie sundaes and Fundue (chocolate dessert fondue).

Each of the recipes in the book comes with ratings, indicating the difficulty of the recipes, although none of them were are really very difficult in general, and the amount of time it takes to make them. One of the things that I liked about this book, besides the ease of the recipes is that the book, is that the pictures show boys cooking as well as girls. I think it’s good that the book portrays cooking as something that both boys and girls can do because it’s a useful life skill for everyone and something that anybody can do for fun.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).