Catherine M. Cassidy

Background: One of my goals this year was to cook at home more. It's less expensive, and I enjoy cooking. Had to pick up on more of it after the divorce because my ex-wife was an amazing cook! If I didn't want to live on microwaveable entrees and canned soups the rest of my life, I had to learn.

I consider myself a semi-cookbook cook. "Semi" in that I *always* adapt the recipes to what I like more of. For example, if a recipe calls for olives, I leave them out because I don't like them. I show more almost always double the amount of onion, because I like it. Etc.

The one area that eluded me until this year was soup. I love soup, and I've tried to make it many times, completely without success. It was always too watery or too goopy or tasteless.

This book has more than 600 recipes and tips, and they're actually good recipes. A lot of cookbooks have lots of weird things you'd never actually make. I foresee enjoying this one for years.

My first effort was pizza soup. It sounded interesting, and I love pizza, so why not? Honestly, I think it would have made a good pasta sauce -- being pretty hearty -- but was acceptable as a soup. I just don't think soup was its ultimate calling.

Today, I made chipotle chicken soup. There are plenty of time-savers, like using canned beans, and I used others, like a food processor for chopping onions and mincing the chipotles.

The end result was flavorful and very hot (I added more peppers and adobo) and made a LOT of soup. I served it with a garnish of sour cream, and with pepper jack quesadillas, and it was AMAZING. Can't wait to enjoy this all week long!

Not only are the soups the kinds of things I'd actually want to eat, they are easy to make, and none of the techniques are out of reach of a beginning cook. They're easy to dress up, and amenable to main-dish status.

Good illustrations give you an idea of what the end result will look like (my final test!), and the recipes tend to incorporate the kinds of things you have in your pantry anyway. Most recipes are just two or three steps (although those include lots of activity).

Highly recommend for those who love soup, who are looking for things to make, or who need some guidance in food preparation. show less

This book is another wonderful addition to Taste of Home's cookbook series. It contains recipes from the 2009 magazine issues of Country Woman, Country, Country EXTRA, Reminisce and Reminisce EXTRA. The recipes here are more "from scratch" using less prepackaged ingredients than the Quick Cooking series (also from Taste of Home). Since I am a single person I especially like the Cooking for Two section, but the entire book contains scrumptious recipes and mouth watering photos. A great series.

Another cookbook leaving my shelves.

This is a slim paperback with 76 recipe cards that you can remove and put in your recipe box. Every recipe has a photo.$3.00

Purchased 07-01-2011