Everyday Cooking Review

Many of you know how much I love to cook and I am always looking for new recipes to try. I was excited to be able to try out  Everyday Cooking from Vickie at Everyday Homemaking.

Everyday Cooking is a cookbook written by a mom a lot like me! She has 8 children and she homeschools so her recipes are practical, quick-to-make, and budget friendly. The cookbook is available both in print as well as a PDF download. While I appreciate technology, when it comes to cooking I do like an old fashioned, printed cookbook. The printed version has a sturdy, glossy front and back cover and it is spiral bound. The spiral bound was a huge plus in my opinion because it is hard to utilize a cookbook that won't lay open flat. There are a few photos of recipes throughout the book that are printed in black and white. This wasn't a huge deal to me as a lot of my cookbooks I inherited from my grandma never had photos so I am used to that.
The cookbook starts out with time saving tips. I loved reading over this because she shared many of the same things I already do! Cook a lot of rice at once to freeze in zipper-seal bags, cook a bunch of chicken to freeze for soups & casserole then take the chicken bones to make broth to freeze, make double the amount of casseroles so you can freeze one for a future meal, etc.
She the goes on to give breakfast ideas to make mornings go smoothly. You can see by the detailed Table of Contents, she offers a lot of great ideas and recipes. As I paged through the cookbook, I could tell she also observes a "Trim Healthy Mama" lifestyle at times as well. In addition to having pretty healthy recipes, she gives tips on how to convert some recipes to THM. She also shares ideas of how to make some of the recipes gluten free which I appreciated since some of my children are GF.
For someone who isn't familiar with meal planning or budget shopping, she offers several tips on how to accomplish this. She also offers a sample monthly menu and even gives you a blank template that you could create your own monthly menu.
Furthermore, if you wanted to use this as a cooking skills class for homeschooling, she also includes a 2 page skills checklist as well as a mini unit on food and nutrition. She also goes on to explain kitchen accessories that she recommends having and why.

I haven't gotten into pressure cooking yet but she offer a section on pressure cooking as well as some of her recipes are specifically written for pressure cooking. I look forward to trying those out eventually.  Throughout the book she offers tidbits of wisdom in little boxes. Some of these are ways to tweak the recipes. Other boxes show a broken egg which indicate her honesty in past experiences of cooking that may have flopped or other funny stories in cooking that didn't always pan out. When I first paged through the cookbook, I jotted down the page numbers of recipes I wanted to try. The first recipe I made was the Unstuffed Chicken Breasts. This involved making stuffing and putting it into mounds and putting strips of chicken breasts on top of the stuffing then topping it with cream of chicken soup.

Because we are gluten free, I used a GF stuffing mix. This wasn't as binding as my normal homemade stuffing so instead of mounds, I just spread it in the bottom of a 9x13 dish and baked it for awhile (as we like semi-crunchy stuffing, not the mushy texture). Once it was fairly baked, I layered chicken strips on top. On top of that, I drizzled a homemade "CreamO" soup mix from the cookbook that was a gluten free cream of chicken soup then baked it.
We all really enjoyed it and it was the perfect comfort food on a cool day.
I also made Helen's Orange Delight which was a dessert that was made up of orange jello, cool whip, crushed pineapple and mandarin oranges. The initial part wasn't thickening like I thought it should so I just sprinkled in a little glucomannan to help thicken it. But the rest came together perfectly. I actually made a double batch of this and shared some with my neighbor. Everyone enjoyed this!

If you are looking for a tried and true recipe book that contains budget friendly recipes that are pretty healthy, then I totally recommend Everyday Cooking! While a lot of what she shared are already things I do, I know most people don't know these tips and for that alone, I'd recommend this cookbook. It would make a great wedding gift for a new bride just starting out or a great cooking class for a homeschooler. 

Right now, Vickie is offering 10% off this book or her Everyday Family Chore System book (both books in PDF download or print version). Use the code TOS10books which expires September 5th.

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