Giveaway Time: The Taste of Home Cookbook, Cooks who Care Edition

Heather says:

Once in a while when someone blogs about food, menus, saving money and all that fun stuff that happens here on Home-Ec 101, you get noticed. A few weeks ago I was contacted by the folks running PR for Taste of Home. They have just launched a new cook book, The Taste of Home Cookbook, Cooks who Care Edition and wanted to know if I was interested in doing a review. I love food, I enjoy reading about food, and I’m always happy to drool over pretty pictures of said food. (I kept my drool to myself, thank you very much.)

I’ve been a fan of ToH for years, in fact long before Home Ec 101 was even a twinkle in my eye, I gave Ivy a subscription to the magazine as a Christmas gift. I can tell y’all are just riveted, hang with me this is called disclosure. I was sent the cookbook for review, but I asked for permission to use it as a giveaway. Sometimes there are weird rules and I wanted to make sure everything was on the up and up.

Here goes the review:

The cookbook starts off with a section on cooking basics to help novice cooks get a feel for the kitchen, then it’s off and running into 600+ pages of recipes. I am happy to report that almost all of the recipes have what I refer to as attainable ingredients. One of my big peeves with many recipe books is the ingredients can be difficult or impossible for someone to find who doesn’t live in a big city. I live in a small town, but it’s not that small, if I have a hard time finding something, I can’t recommend the recipe.

After giving it a once over, my only beef with the whole book was a recipe for gravy. But, let’s be real here, gravy techniques are passed down and we’re all going to feel as if the way we learned is the only way.  Don’t forget we chefs are notoriously picky and temperamental.

The recipes are clear, suitable for families, and not overly adventurous. While it’s sometimes fun to try out exotic ingredients, there is a welcome place, especially for those just finding their rhythm in the kitchen for recipes that don’t stray too far from the expected. There are narratives at the beginning of each section, highlighting a -wait for it- cook who cares!

To review this copy, I did have to open the plastic wrap.  Because life is what it is one of my kids had to take off with it, but don’t worry, it still has that new car smell and the recipes were not altered. They can be devious, but they haven’t gone so far as to figure out rearranging typesetting. Along with the previously opened cookbook, you will receive one full year of Taste of Home magazine and premium access to their recipe collection at TasteofHome.com and anyone is welcome to join their Cooks Who Care forum.

It’s a great cookbook and would sit on my shelf -if I weren’t giving it to one of you. There are three ways to enter:

1. Comment and promise you’ll come back, even though you’ll have lots of new recipes on your own bookshelf.
2. Tweet -sorry folks, Twitter isn’t going away any time soon- about this contest and place the url of the tweet in a new comment.
3. Post about this contest on your blog, your favorite message board, Facebook, or whatever fabulous social media site floats your boat. I’m not picky, I’m just giving you an extra chance. Just make sure you put the url in a new comment.

This giveaway will end Friday night October 9th 2009 at 9pm Eastern, because I don’t stay up late. The winner will be chosen by random drawing.

Have fun!