A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I have only made it up through the coconut macaroons, and I have already cried.

Twice.

I preordered this book, being a longtime Orangette reader with unshaken trust in Molly's palate. The combination of ingredients in her Buchons Au Thons alone changed the way I consider food, flavor, and a can of tuna.

More than that, Molly writes about food the way I feel about food -- simple meals are intertwined with memories and people and how we become who and what we are. Even if I someday manage a perfect souffle, I will still crave my mom's egg salad sandwiches, white bread only, on Sundays in July.

I tend to fall into Nigella Lawson books -- she makes cooking look SO sexy and fun -- but the domestic goddess is missing an accessibility Molly manages easily. Her voice and the sometimes heart-rendingly personal stories she tells with each recipe really do bring you to her kitchen table. And then they give you a cookie.

From its simple, delightful design to the stories to the recipes that come with USEFUL instructions (seriously, so many recipes fail at this), this is already one of my favorite cookbooks. This, to me, is what food is about.

If I have one complaint, it's that the simple design doesn't allow for glossy 8x10 photos of each recipe's results. Thank god she's still got Orangette for that!

Click Here to see more reviews about: A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table

Get 34% OFF

Want to read more honest consumer review about A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table now ?

Flying Apron's Gluten-free & Vegan Baking Book Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I love this book, and I plan on giving it as a gift to anyone interested in GF baking. This weekend I made the Pumpkin Glory Loaf with molasses and the whole house smelled absolutely divine for hours. I plan on making the cranberry apple tart with cornmeal and pine nut crust for Thanksgiving. I'll try to update this review from time to time with successes and failures, but so far this book and I are on a serious winning streak.

As context, I've been baking GF for about two years now. I have copies of Bette Hagman's two main baking books: The Gluten-free Gourmet Makes Dessert: More Than 200 Wheat-free Recipes for Cakes, Cookies, Pies and Other Sweets and The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread: More Than 200 Wheat-Free Recipes and I adore those books as well. Bette uses a lot of eggs in her recipes. I don't fault her for that. Eggs make excellent binders and bring more protein to the equation. My family is not vegan, but sometimes I do worry about the constant stream of eggs we're pouring into our systems. I had periodically tried to make GF bread without eggs (using egg replacer mostly) and I failed every time.

Enter the Flying Apron Baking book and their ever-so-clever use of pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and yams as the missing ingredient. Magic! Without cholesterol! I'm ecstatic! (I hope I'm not giving too much away here. You should still buy the book! There's so much more to it than my own little revelation of how to get moisture and a little binder into egg-free breads.)

In short, I can't wait to try every single recipe in this book. Seriously. I'll probably substitute a bit here and there, but there's a wealth of tricks and techniques in this little book.

For those of you that are skeptical about GF baking or about vegan baking, I wish I could mail you all a baked good or two from the Flying Apron here in Seattle. They would make believers out of you!

Click Here to see more reviews about: Flying Apron's Gluten-free and Vegan Baking Book

Product Description:
Flying Apron Bakery has become famous for serving up tasty and delicious baked goods to those with celiac disease and for others on a gluten-free diet. Because the foods are so tasty, many gluten eaters likewise flock to the bakery. In this cookbook, owner Jennifer Katzinger shares her favorite dishes and secrets to gluten-free baking. Sampling both the sweet and the savory, the 80-plus recipes include scones (plus their signature flying aprons), muffins, cookies, pies, cakes and cupcakes, frostings, breads, soups, turnovers, and potpies. Recipes include Buckwheat Flying Apron Biscuits, Cardamom Spice Cake, Polenta Cannelli, Bean Torte with Caponota, and Ginger Wheel Cookies. All are gluten-free, vegan, and use organic whole food ingredients. Featuring a foreword by the Gluten-Free Girl herself, Shauna James Ahern, the book contains vibrant color photographs of dishes and of the bakery, as well as resource list for hard-to-find specialty ingredients.

Get 32% OFF

Want to read more honest consumer review about Flying Apron's Gluten-free and Vegan Baking Book now ?