Bruce Von Stiers

My wife is a wonderful cook. Not only does she have great culinary skills, Ruth finds some of the best recipes to make for our family. Every once in a while I will get cookbooks to review. Ruth takes a look at them and offers her opinion. Then I take a look myself and see if my opinion matches hers. Whereas I am not a chef by any means, I pretty much know what looks good in a recipe and what doesn’t. Even if there’s a glowing picture of a completed dish in a cookbook, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will taste delicious. But the latest cookbook that I looked at had both glowing pictures and great looking recipes. The title of the cookbook is Pillsbury Doughboy Family Pleasing Recipes. The book comes from the Pillsbury Company and was published by Clarkson Potter.

The book has 175 pages and is printed on high gloss pages. There are numerous full color pictures in the books of completed recipes and related food items. The credits list Mary Caldwell as Contributing Writer and folks like Sue Brue, Cindy Ojczyk and JoAnn Cherry as the Food Stylists. Other contributors to the book include Carrie Jacobson, Sue Finley and Karen Husu, R.D.

The book has a four page introduction and six sections. The Introduction, as well as the rest of the text in the book, was printed in fairly large type. The sections of the book are Main Dishes, Side Dishes, Cookies And Bars, Snacks, Cakes, Pies and other Desserts and Soups, Stews and Chiles. The Introduction has segments like Make Mealtime A Pleasing Time and Kids Can Help. It gives you some tips on keeping meals interesting, even going so far as renaming foods so that they seem more appealing to your kids.

There is a recipe listing at the beginning of each section. The listing for the Main Dishes will tell what page the Turkey Mac recipe is on. You will know that the Roasted Chicken with Peach Glaze is on page 42 by glancing at the recipe listing.

In the Main Dishes section you will find recipes for Beef, Pork, Vegetarian dishes, Poultry and Fish and Seafood. In the Beef area you have recipes like Easy Cheeseburger Pizza and Beef Enchilada Casserole.

The Easy Cheeseburger Pizza recipe features refrigerated pie crust, red onion, shredded cheddar cheese, pickle slices, spaghetti sauce and extra lean ground beef. From start to finish the recipe should take only about 35 minutes to make. The recipe has you bake the pizza crust for about 8 minutes and then top it with ingredients. Pop it back in the oven for 12 to 18 minutes for a golden brown crust. Add some pickle slices as additional topping after grabbing the finished pizza from the oven. This recipe has a Kitchen Tip that lets you know why you are supposed to partially bake the crust before adding any ingredients. There is also a Kids Can Help tip to get the children involved in food preparation. Almost every recipe will have a Kitchen Tip or a Kids Can Help segment with it.

Each recipe in the cookbook has a Nutrition Information Per Serving listing. This gives you the serving size for the recipe, along with information about how many calories the dish carries and the Daily Value percentages. It also has information on the Dietary Exchanges.

Some of the sections have meal ideas. In the Quick Poultry Meal Ideas, you will find information on fast meals like Smoked Turkey Fettuccine and Salsa Chicken Wraps. For the Fettuccine idea, grab some cooked turkey sausage and put it together with fettuccine and spaghetti sauce. You will use chicken breast cubes and tortillas for the Salsa Chicken Wraps. These meal ideas are quick and easy, no need for checking out a recipe to prepare dinner.

In the Soups, Stews and Chiles section you will find recipes like Salmon Noodle Supreme. This recipe can be completed in 35 minutes. You will use angel hair pasta, along with condensed cream of celery soup and boneless, skinless pink salmon. This is a casserole dish that will be topped with a combination of butter, crushed butter crackers and dill weed.

In a variation of the Rice Krispie Treats, the Cookies and Bars section has a recipe called Bear-y Good Bars. The recipe is just like a Rice Krispie Treat recipe except that you add 1 cup of Gummi Bear candies to it. When you are done, the bars have an extra chooey, gooey taste to them. And the full page, full color picture of a few of the Bear-y Good Bars really makes your mouth water.

In the Snacks section there are recipes for Cheese ‘n Bacon Biscuit Flatbread and Flaky Pizza Snacks. The flatbread recipe calls for frozen biscuits and the pizza snacks for refrigerated crescent rolls. One nice thing about the recipes in this book is that they don’t name Pillsbury products as specific ingredients needed for preparation. You know that they mean Pillsbury Crescent Rolls when that type of ingredient is listed, but it isn’t a have too. The Cheese ‘n Bacon Biscuit Flatbread works with the Grands biscuits awfully well.

Pillsbury Doughboy Family Pleasing Recipes is a nice addition to the growing list of recipe books from Pillsbury. It has fast, easy recipes that will delight cooks in their ease of preparation and make the mouths water of everyone waiting to taste these wonderful creations.

This book can be found at stores like Barnes and Noble. It has a list price of $ 19.95 U.S. It can also be order through the folks at Clarkson Potter. As they are a division of Random House, you can order the book their web site at www.randomhouse.com.