I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

2 pages of racism against asians repel me from liking this book or amy sedaris.......2007-09-17

As with other Cook's Illustrated projects, Make-Ahead includes recipes that have appeared previously in its other works, though a majority of these have been amended with make-ahead or scaling-up data. Almost all the recipes are prefaced with their trademark testing "diaries," exhaustively detailed accounts of the recipe-making process ("With the onion shells figured out, we focused next on the filling...," gives the flavor), which some readers will find enlightening, but others will think excessive. Of course, certain recipes, or recipe classes, like that for desserts, are necessarily made wholly or partially in advance--but the book's point is to provide formulas designed to yield superior results even when the uncompleted dishes are held, as most can be, in the refrigerator or freezer. Mission accomplished. Readers will find the book a consistently reliable resource for superior make-ahead dishes for everyday and special-occasion cooking. --Arthur Boehm

An exceptional purchase any public library or busy cook must have........2007-07-27

Deen's dishes couldn't be more approachable and will doubtlessly inspire many holiday menus. Readers should know, however, that she regularly calls for convenience products like cake mixes and canned soups, whose use (by now something of an American tradition in itself) can do little to make homemade food taste as good as it otherwise might. Paula Deen Celebrates! should, however, excite Deen's many fans, who, along with the attractive formulas, receive lots of "back-story" on the author's own celebrations, life, and mostly good times. --Arthur Boehm

What better way to start off the New Year than with a New Year's Eve Brunch with friends -- at midnight! This colorful celebration includes Crab and Spinach Casserole and Baked Tomatoes, and finishes with a quintessentially southern Hummingbird Cake and Irish Coffee. Welcome St. Patrick's Day, Savannah style, with Lamb Stew and Green Grits Pie. The centerpiece of an Easter dinner is a Peanut Butter-Glazed Ham, accompanied by Spinach-Swiss Casserole, Squash Boats, and flaky Butterhorns, with a bonus recipe for Ham Salad that makes eating leftovers a treat. Looking for a reason to party, south-of-the-border style? Try Paula's Cinco de Mayo Fiesta menu, with Macho Nachos and a cool and creamy Margarita Mousse. Paula honors the memory of her mother, and all the other women who have blessed her life, with a Mother's Day Tea of dainty sandwiches and irresistible cookies served on her best china, and fathers get their due with a Father's Day Boating Picnic. The Fourth of July is the perfect occasion for an Outdoor Grill Party and Low-Country Boil, and if what you want is a quiet evening at home, pop a movie in the DVD player and chow down on your choice of Paula's savory and sweet pizzas. Gather the family to watch some football and savor Jamie's Cheeseburger Pies, and give family and friends the gift of a sweet treat at the holidays with Paula's Icebox Fruitcake or Peppermint Bark. Her Christmas feast starts with Cranberry Holiday Brie and stars an impressive Standing Rib Roast, with Twice-Baked Potato Casserole. The show-stopping dessert is Paula's butter-laden Coconut Pound Cake glazed with coconut syrup and covered with icing and toasted coconut!

Paula brings you into her home, her kitchen, and her heart with family stories and photographs. This time, her husband, Michael, sons Jamie and Bobby, and brother, Bubba, chime in to share their memories, too. Decorating and serving ideas will inspire you to use what you have to carry through a theme to make the most informal meal special. And Paula shares her most private thoughts in a special feature -- Paula's Pearls of Wisdom -- which you'll find with each menu.

Paula Deen Celebrates! is Paula at her very southern best. Join her in making and sharing her best dishes for the best times of your life.

Have you ever walked into a room full of strangers -- be it a business function, a meeting, or a cocktail party -- and felt uncomfortable? In the NEW How to Work a Room, " The Mingling Maven" Susan RoAne provides the tools and techniques for savy socializing in all situations so that you are comfortable in any room. She identifies the roadblocks that prevent us from meeting new people, developing new contacts, and establishing connections that build personal and professional relationships. Susan offers a practical remedy to overcome each roadblock. You will learn how to mix chutzpah with charm to start and end conversations smoothly, know when and how to use humor , and follow the simple rules of etiquette in an emerging manner. Incorporating a decade of feedback from hundreds of presentations, as well as the new chapters " How to Work A Virtual Room" and "How to Work the Techno Toy Room," How to Work a Room is a book that will change your life.

Tired of quick recipes that aren't really quick or don't taste very good? While some cookbooks promise 30-minute meals, America's Test Kitchen delivers. The Best 30-Minute Recipe is packed with more than 300 great-tasting recipes, along with time-saving techniques that will help you become more efficient in the kitchen. You'll also find honest evaluations of ingredients important to quick cooking, such as chicken broth, preshredded cheese, instant rice, and more. And because the type of equipment you use is important to the success of any recipe—made in 30 minutes or not—we tell you which brands are worth buying.

The Best 30-Minute Recipe features a surprisingly wide range of recipes. You get not only the very best versions of naturally quick dishes like salads and stir-fries, but also quick and easy recipes for typically long-cooking dishes that you'd never even think of making on a weeknight—including meatloaf, lasagna, beef pot pie, and a pad thai so easy that you may never call for takeout again. With efficiency and good taste, The Best 30-Minute Recipe is the time-pressed cook's guide to getting dinner on the table, night after night.

As today's workplace becomes increasingly more competitive, knowing how to behave can make the difference between getting ahead and getting left behind. In The Etiquette Advantage in Business, 2nd Edition, etiquette authorities Peggy Post and Peter Post provide you with the all-important tools for building solid, productive relationships with your business associates -- relationships that will help propel you and your company straight to the top.

In this completely revised and updated edition, which includes three new chapters on ethics, table manners, and electronic communication, the Posts show you how to handle both everyday and unusual situations that are essential to professional and personal success -- from resolving business conflicts with ease and grace to getting along with your boss and coworkers; from making long-lasting contacts to winning clients and closing deals. They also offer up-to-date guidance on pressing issues such as harassment in the workplace, worker privacy, e-mail dos and don'ts, and knowing how and when to shoulder blame.

Written for business workers of all types and backgrounds, The Etiquette Advantage in Business remains the definitive resource for timeless advice on business entertaining, written communication, dressing appropriately for any business occasion, conventions and trade shows, job searches and interviews, gift-giving, and overseas travel.

No matter the situation in which you find yourself, the Posts will give you the confidence to meet the challenges of the work world with confidence and poise -- because today, more than ever, good manners mean good business.

Unorthodox, "better-way" approaches abound. For example, a fried chicken formula instructs the cook to wet the bird's dry coating slightly before it's applied for an extra-crunchy crust. Predictably, side bars feature equipment and ingredient evaluations, on bottled salsa, for example; "good food/bad food" photographs show readers what to aim for when producing fare like holiday cookies; and there are tips, charts, and "Cooking 101" sidebars galore. Step-by-step photos offer more direction still.

Though the majority of recipes are sound and yield tempting results, readers poring through the book will note gaffes and curiosities. The recipe for poached eggs, for example, offers the option of extra cooking for "firm yolks" (hard-boiled poached eggs, anyone?) and hamburgers receive an indentation before cooking to avoid "puffy" domed burgers, a novel problem that could, in any case, be solved by proper shaping. The addition of sugar to some savory dishes--for example, a pan sauce for steak--is misguided. Readers should also know that the book, which comes in loose-leaf form, requires some assembly, and that the pages themselves are quite thin, making them vulnerable to spills and tearing in daily kitchen use.

These things said, the book delivers solid, family-friendly dishes with enough fully orchestrated "how- to" to make even novice cooks feel secure when tackling the basics or more ambitious fare.

What's New in the Revised Editon?
First out in 2005, America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook was praised for its recipe ease, inclusiveness, and wealth of helpful information, but was also criticized for its physical production. A loose-leaf book with its pages included separately, readers found it inconvenient to assemble and its paper impractically thin. The revised edition is printed on heavier stock, and arrives with its pages already on its rings (there are two more now, for sturdiness) with only chapter dividers to insert, a simple task.

In addition, new inside front and back covers provide information on emergency substitutions, roasting guidelines, equivalent measures, and more--and a "Light Recipes" chapter has been included. Without defining precisely what "light" means--fewer fats and carbs, or a combo?--the section offers attractive all-course recipes, such as turkey chili, veggie burgers, meat and cheese lasagna, and chocolate bundt cake. Some readers will welcome the "slimming" of familiar dishes while others will find some of the manipulations--using cornstarch to thicken the sauce in fettuccine alfredo or ricotta to add body to a reduced-fat pesto, for example--unappealing. The book, however, remains a valuable kitchen tool--and one with greater convenience and durability than before. --Arthur Boehm

Exclusive Recipe Excerpts from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (Revised Edition)

Butternut Squash Soup

Light Chicken Parmesan
Classic Apple Pie

More from America's Test Kitchen

The Best of America's Test Kitchen 2007

Cook's Illustrated

The Best 30-Minute Recipe

Book Description

Repackaged to be easier to use and expanded to include a whole new chapter of healthy, light recipes, this revised edition of one of last fall's bestselling cookbooks remains the one and only basic cookbook you will ever need. Beautiful step-by-step photos illuminate every conceivable technique from chopping shallots and skinning salmon to cutting up a chicken and tying a roast. In fact, just about anything you want to do in the kitchen is explained in these pages in America's most popular test kitchen's approachable, no-nonsense voice.

These recipes will keep you busy (and your friends and family happy) for years to come, since we've included hundreds of easy weeknight dishes (like Skillet Lasagna and One-Pot Chicken and Rice), company-worthy dinners (like Beef Burgundy, Roast Leg of Lamb, and Fresh Fruit Trifle), equipment ratings, shoppings tips, and more.

Customer Reviews:

Best Basic Cookbook.......2007-10-11

I have over a thousand cookbooks. I am a pretty accomplished cook with some professional experience. My wife on the other hand is potentially a great cook who is just getting acquainted with the kitchen. We both agree that this is our favorite basic cookbook. I highly recommend this book as a basic reference for any one learning how to cook. As a well experienced cook I can vouch for the quality of the recipes as tested by America's Test Kitchen. If you had to buy only one cookbook this would be the one.

Family Cookbook, America's Test Kitchen.......2007-09-27

I have been a subscriber of Cooks Magazine for over ten years now and have never been dissapointed. I am a professional Chef and find most of their publications to be great sources. My still favorite and mostly used source is the original Julia Child Cookbook based on her TV programs of years ago but this America's Test Kitchen publication,I suspect, I will use a great deal.

Test Kitchen Cookbook.......2007-09-26

I really like this cookbook because it has good pictures and explainations for techniques with which new cooks may be unfamiliar. Putting the pages and dividers in yourself is clear and easy. The pages are a little thinner than I would prefer for a cookbook, but I just use a clear plastic page protector that one might use for a portfolio or scrapbook to keep the page I am using clean. I highly recommend it!

The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook.......2007-09-15

Amazon did an outstanding timely job getting me the cookbook. This cookbook is the very best I have ever read. I gave one to my daughter and will be ordering one for myself. Thanks.

The First Word on Cooking.......2007-09-14

The best basic recipes ever published. All tested.

Wish they would issue update pages with more and new recipes

Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days

Average customer rating:

Charming
Delicious Reading
Too rich!
Simply, a masterpiece!
"Life is Meals" a book to devour!

Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days
James Salter , and Kay Salter
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Gastronomy | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

History | Gastronomy | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

General | Special Occasions | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0307264963
Release Date: 2006-10-17

Book Description

From the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author James Salter and his wife, Kay—amateur chefs and perfect hosts—here is a charming, beautifully illustrated tour de table: a food lover's companion that, with an entry for each day of the year, takes us from a Twelfth Night cake in January to a champagne dinner on New Year's Eve. Life Is Meals is rich with culinary wisdom, history, recipes, literary pleasures, and the authors' own memories of successes and catastrophes.

For instance:

• The menu on the Titanic on the fatal night

• Reflections on dining from Queen Victoria, JFK, Winnie-the-Pooh, Garrison Keillor, and many others

• The seductiveness of a velvety Brie or the perfect martini

• How to decide whom to invite to a dinner party—and whom not to

• John Irving's family recipe for meatballs; Balzac's love of coffee

• The greatest dinner ever given at the White House

• Where in Paris Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter had French onion soup at 4:00 a.m.

• How to cope with acts of God and man-made disasters in the kitchen

Sophisticated as well as practical, opinionated, and indispensable, Life Is Meals is a tribute to the glory of food and drink, and the joy of sharing them with others. "The meal is the emblem of civilization," the Salters observe. "What would one know of life as it should be lived, or nights as they should be spent, apart from meals?"

Customer Reviews:

Charming.......2007-05-11

I love reading cookbooks and cooking magazines so this book was a bit of a change of pace. But I enjoyed it immensely. I read it on vacation and shared with my husband some of the tidbits of history in the book. It is easy to read in short spurts. It has a little bit of everything. Recipes, history, anecdotes, menus. The writers did a very nice job.

Delicious Reading.......2007-04-19

This uniquely unclassifiable book is an utter delight. More than a cookbook, more than advice on how to entertain, more than a history of food and its preparation, it is both a memoir and veritable instruction manual about how to dine and live with style and gusto. Simultaneously worldly and sophisticated, casual and candid, every page offers a new treat. The illustrations are charming and perfectly complement the tone of the book. You'll want an extra copy to give to special friends.

Too rich!.......2007-03-27

Although I did finish this book, and I found some of the ideas and information very interesting, I doubt this is a book I would ever thoroughly revisit. Some of the anecdotes, while obviously meant to be charming, disarming, and heartwarming, had the opposite effect, and made the authors seem pretentious. This did not feel like a collection of casual observations about food written by people who love it. Rather, it felt more like an affected assortment of entries written by finicky epicures. As an aside, I found the passages that he wrote much more enjoyable than hers. Unfortunately, she seems to have written the majority of the book.
Of course, this is only my opinion, but these authors have a very strong voice, and if you don't enjoy it, it will be a constant irritation throughout the book. I would recommend Ruth Reichl's books as an alternative for a food lover.
Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table
Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table

Simply, a masterpiece!.......2007-02-24

This book is a treasure. To read it is to be reminded of the joy of living, AND eating. - Exquisite in every way, one savors each page as one would savor a great wine or haute cuisine.

There is no book that I can think of which begs to be enjoyed as much as this one. It is informative and witty at the same time. The illustrations are works of art, and the Salters set new standards of writing for a work such as this.

God bless them and this book. They have enriched us all. A MUST BUY!

"Life is Meals" a book to devour!.......2007-01-16

This was a delightful read. The recipes are marvelous, the stories most entertaining. It is a book you won't want to put down and you will refer to for a lifetime. The perfect hostess gift!!!

The South Beach Diet Parties and Holidays Cookbook: Healthy Recipes for Entertaining Family and Friends

Average customer rating:

Great Food and Still Losing Weight!
South Beach Diet over Christmas
Great Ideas for Holidays and Gatherings!
Something that FINALLY works!
Best Cookbook I Have Ever Bought!

The South Beach Diet Parties and Holidays Cookbook: Healthy Recipes for Entertaining Family and Friends
Arthur Agatston
Manufacturer: Rodale Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

Healthy | Special Diet | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

General | Special Occasions | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

Holidays | Special Occasions | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

Agatston, Arthur | Authors, A-Z | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1594864446
Release Date: 2006-10-03

Book Description

The famed Miami Beach cardiologist who has helped millions of people worldwide to lose weight and eat healthier with his best-selling South Beach Diet books now addresses the special challenge that can undermine anyones willpowerthe irresistible lure of diet-busting dishes at festive occasions. As the more than 20 menus and 150 easy, all-new recipes in this cookbook prove, theres no need to give up favorite holiday and party dishes to stay on the South Beach Diet. Dr. Agatston explains that healthy entertaining is not a matter of deprivation, but of simply making as many good choices as possible. His new book provides those choices, putting a healthy twist on favorite entertaining meals for every occasion, whether its a family Christimas Eve dinner, a Thanksgiving feast, a Passover seder, a football fest in front of the TV, or a backyard barbeque with the neighbors.

Customer Reviews:

Great Food and Still Losing Weight!.......2007-05-22

This cook book is wonderful! Recipes are easy and taste really good. Friends have said "I thought you were on a diet" after eating a holiday or special occasion meal with us. I tell them I am still ona diet and have this wonderful cookbook with meal ideas and recipes that makes a person think otherwise!

South Beach Diet over Christmas.......2007-04-01

If you've found it hard to keep to a diet plan during Christmas or Thanksgiving, this book will solve your problems. Easy and delicious recipes based on the South Beach diet.

Great Ideas for Holidays and Gatherings!.......2007-03-15

The South Beach Diet may have revolutionized how we eat, but when it comes to entertaining, most of us fall back into old food habits. Now there's a no-brainer way to entertain, with recipes and menus that can satisfy the most skeptical guests. Really a winner, and easy to use.

Something that FINALLY works!.......2007-01-20

As long as you have the determination to "stick with it" and lose weight, this program, and this book, will make getting there a breeze! How tough can it be to stay on a diet, when you're allowed to eat all kinds of delicious, "sinful" foods??? For the first time in my life, I am 2 pounds lighter than before the holidays started; and, I didn't have to give up the joy of eating... I highly recommend this book and the program it represents. Recipes are not difficult and the results are most rewarding. Furthermore, you cannot beat the price at Amazon and the book was in my house, two days after I placed the order...

Best Cookbook I Have Ever Bought!.......2007-01-16

This is the first cookbook I have bought where I can see myself actually trying every recipe in it. Dr. Agatston has broken the book into specific holidays and events (Easter, Thanksgiving, Football parties, showers, etc.), but of course feel free to mix and match recipes based on what your preferred tastes are. The recipes that I have tried so far have been easy and delicious. The best part is at the end of every recipe, he tells you what you can prepare ahead of time, from hours before your event to days before your event. Each recipe is labeled as to which phase of the South Beach Diet it pertains, just as in his other books. This cookbook is too good to save just for holidays and parties. I'm planning on using it year-round for my family's everyday meals.

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