📖Holiday Gifts – Cookbooks

It’s busy every day of the year…but the holiday season puts a special strain on everybody. Getting meals on the table takes on a whole new level of complexity. You’re ready to bite the kids heads off and grind them up into hamburger before every meal. Am I right?

Don’t worry, it’s not just you. It’s all of us.

Don’t let the guilt eat at you…as long as you haven’t served kiddo burgers, you’re doing fine. Really.

But the guilt for the way you feel on top of the stress of getting meals onto the table isn’t something that you have to live with. Imagine cutting down on the time it takes to put meals together and being less stressed while you’re doing the cooking.<

Seriously, it’s possible.

Here are five cookbooks that I’ve relied on over the years to help me get through all the busy mealtimes we’ve had as the Hectic Kids were growing up. Having raised eight of them, all of whom where deeply involved in sports, I know what I’m talking about. Heck, right now I’m sitting on the side of a volleyball court as my youngest daughter practices with her club team. We had na hour drive to get her, she’ll have a two hour practice, and then we’ve got the hour drive back home. I had to come up with a dinner tonight that could be ready before we left, but then available as the other kids trickled in from their activities. Sure, they’re not all living at home anymore, but the ones living at home want to have dinner every night.

Who woulda though?

Kidding aside, these cookbooks have been life savers more times than I can count. The spine on one of them is so battered from use that it might as well be a loose-leaf instead of a hard-bound book.

The best part of these books is you can order copies as presents for any of your harried friends. They make great gifts as well as awesome additions to your own library.

So here are five quick reviews to help you decide if any of these books would be a help:

Antonia had me at the first paragraph of the introduction. Yeah, I’m one of those weirdos that reads the dedication and introduction to books…even cookbooks. She talks about her family sitting down to family meals and how important it was for them. This is exactly how we were as the Hectic Clan was growing up. We always sat down to dinner as a family…meaning that on a lot of nights we were having dinner at 9pm after all the sports practices were done. But it was that important to us.

If you get an opportunity to thumb through this book (or use the Look Inside feature of Amazon) you’re going to find some easy, awesome recipes. But you also discover that these aren’t your run-of-the-mill recipes in dozens of other cookbooks you can buy. These are fun, interesting, and mix some really interesting flavors and textures.

I’ll warn you off the bat, this cookbook isn’t a picture book. There are photos in the book, but they’re grouped together. If you’re one of the people who’s going to write a review on Amazon and gripe about the lack of photos…please don’t buy this book! But if you’re looking for creative recipes that will have you cooking up a storm with as little time invested as possible…this is the cookbook for you (or your friends)!

If the The Busy Mom’s Cookbook is a bit off the beaten path, Home at 7, Dinner at 8 is a trek into the wilderness. While I love making unique and exotic recipes…the Hectic Family is much more reluctant to try things. I had to be careful not to make too many of these recipes in one week, but sneaking one in every now and then was really satisfying for me and let my kids try some new things.

This cookbook is definitely loaded with photos, so if that’s your thing…you’re going to love this book.

I’ll have to admit that my favorite section of this cookbook is the chapter on Sweet Tooth items. I’m not the best dessert maker in the world, I need a lot of help. The recipes in this section were both straightforward and just exotic enough that nobody knew what they were supposed to look like (or taste like). In fairly short order I was able to hit some absolute home runs out the Home at 7, Dinner at 8.

While this is technically a cookbook, it really falls more into the kitchen resource category. The first 33 pages are filled with tons of information about fruits, herbs, spices, and all sorts of other goodies. I was utterly amazed at how much information I learned from these resources. There are days when I think I know a lot…and then I run across a book like Amazing 7 Minute Meals and realize that I’m not nearly as learned as I think.

Oh well…it’s always good to learn.

While Yvonne Stephens is Dutch, the vast majority of the recipes in this cookbook at stir-fry recipes. I was baffled as to why that was. Seriously, I don’t think Dutch cuisine and stir fry in the same sentence. But when I read the introduction, it made a lot of sense. The Dutch controlled the international spice trade for centuries, and Indonesia was part of their empire. So the foods, spices, and tastes from the Orient quickly made their way back to the Netherlands. So from now on, I’ll add Dutch cuisine to the other cuisines that really on high heat, quick cooking stir fry meals.

Probably the best part of this cookbook are the short lists of ingredients and instructions. These are relatively simple recipes that don’t take a ton of prep to get to the 7 Minute part. It’s refreshing to actually have the cookbook live up to its name. Too many others have some numerical portion to their title that is fudged in every recipe. Not so with Amazing 7 Minute Meals.

Do you have a cookbook in your kitchen that has all sorts of post-it tabs for favorite recipes? I’ve got lots, but Taste of Home Quick Cooking Annual Recipes 2011 probably wins the award for the most post-it’s. It’s so laden with them that I couldn’t fit them all on the long-side of the book, so I’ve got them on the top and bottom of the pages. In fact, I took a quick scan of my paper copy to see if I’d marked any recipes as don’t make again. There was one. And it’s because three of the kids didn’t like it. I, on the other hand, loved it. So I feel safe saying every one of the recipes in this cookbook is a winner.

Imagine a cookbook that says the recipes will take 30 minutes and they take 30 minutes of cooking. They don’t include the prep time, so those 30-minute recipes are more like 45-60 minute affairs.

Yeah, that pretty much describes every cookbook that puts a time in their title.

Well, Taste of Home gets it right in Taste of Home 30-Minute Cookbook. These recipes take roughly 30 minutes from start to finish. That’s important, because sometimes you only have 30 minutes to get a meal on the table. If you can’t trust your cookbook, who can you trust?

Even better, these are delicious recipes. There’s nothing exotic in this cookbook, but that’s fine with me. Sometimes you just want good home cooking. And Taste of Home always delivers!

This is a great cookbook that you’ll love to have on your shelf and you can feel confident giving it as a gift to anybody on your list!

So there you go. Five different cookbooks that you can buy for yourself or give as gifts for the holidays. And the best part is all the recipes are fast, delicious, and easy-to-prepare. It doesn’t get much better than that!