Everyday Cooking

Everyday Cooking, a cookbook for homeschooling families from Everyday Homemaking

When my children are grown and move away to start families of their own, I want them both to know how to cook and so I was very excited when we got the opportunity to review “Everyday Cooking“, a cookbook filled with extra tips and ideas from Everyday Homemaking.

More Than Just A Cookbook

Everyday Cooking is so much more than just a cookbook. Vicki Bentley wrote this book for her daughters. She wanted them to have one spot filled with all the recipes that they grew up with, as well as advice and directions for managing the food.

Managing food may sound strange to you, but my husband and I spent more than 5 years teaching ourselves to manage the food in our home so that we could minimize waste and expenses. I discovered many of these tips in Vicki Bentley’s book, but there were many, many new ideas for me to discover.

How My Family Liked It

We tried a number of recipes, all of them winners. It began with one evening when I realized that I had sat with the children reading for too long in the afternoon and hadn’t thought ahead to get dinner going. I turned to the Everyday Cooking book and scanned through to find a recipe that called for ingredients we had on hand. Luckily I had a sizable pot of rice I had cooked the night before but we hadn’t eaten as well as leftover roasted chicken. And so I made Curried Chicken Casserole.

I do not often make casseroles and so when my kids wandered through looking to see what smelled so good, they were dubious. “What are you doing Mom? What are you doing to that chicken? Please don’t experiment when I am this hungry!” Well, those same children gobbled up dinner and told me, “This is the best thing ever! Can you make it again tomorrow night? Don’t lose that recipe!”

A few days later I tried a cookie recipe: Chocolate Chip Treasure Cookies. This was a really interesting cookie to make. It has no eggs, so you would think it would come out like a shortbread, but it looked and tasted like an egg-based chocolate chip cookie, with the coconut treasure included. There is also no sugar and no salt, and yet the additional ingredients meld together into a sweet delicious cookie. The only trouble with it was that I never managed to get a picture of the baked cookies! They got eaten so quickly by my family (Yes, I helped the effort as well), that nothing ever made it to the cookie jar.

I could go on and on with everything we tried, but the last notable cooking experience with Everyday Cooking was an evening spent with my son. Everyday Cooking is written for Vicki Bentley’s daughters and daughters in general. While my daughter can cook well, it is not her passion. My son, on the other hand, lives for the opportunity to explore the chemistry of cooking. He is perhaps the best cook I have ever met, and so I was happy of the opportunity to try out Everyday Cooking side by side with my teen gourmand. He decided to try out the Chicken and Broccoli Braid. As we did not have any pre-cooked chicken on hand, he cooked up the meat and I made the bread dough and chopped the vegetables. Then we assembled and filled the braid, baked it and wow, did I enjoy that meal! My son has ideas to tweak the spices, he loves to constantly improve upon flavors, and I am looking forward to the next evening we can spend together in the kitchen cooking dinner side by side!

Written by a Mom who Homeschooled For Years

Vicki Bentley homeschooled for years and years, and the time-saving ideas she discovered along the way are in this recipe book! How do you get dinner on the table after a long day of homeschooling a pile of happy children? The method of meal planning that will allow you to be that homeschooling supermom who can feed her family with healthy meals is in this cookbook.

Recipes for Making Ingredients Save Time and Money

Everyday cooking has all the usual categories of recipes: appetizers, bread, soups, desserts, main dishes made with chicken, pork, and beef. But the best secret of this cookbook is that it includes recipes to make ingredients that you might otherwise purchase in the store.

Why would you care to make ingredients at home? Well if you make your own spaghetti sauce or vanilla extract you will know exactly what went into the ingredient, and you will also be able to make it in large batches and store (or freeze) what you don’t use.

Making large batches and storing for later is the secret to homeschooling while maintaining a happy family. It saves a huge amount of money to cook this way, and if you freeze (as suggested in Everyday Cooking) measured out amounts of pre-cooked staples like rice then getting dinner on the table is so much faster and easier.

…And So Much More

There is so much more in this cookbook beyond the recipes.

• Introduction that gently guides and explains how to cook for a family in a thoughtful and intentional manner
• Timesaving Tips
• Low-Carb and Gluten-Free Pantry Helpers
• Basic Measurements and Helps
• Meal Planning and Shopping Hints
• Sample Menus & Menu Planning Masters
• Basic Cooking Skills Checklist
• Basic Kitchen Accessories
• Kitchen Equipment
• The Tortoise and the Hare Run The Dinnertime Race: Slow Cookers vs. Pressure Cookers
• Pressure Cooker Tips & Favorites

There is even a separate index dedicated to practical tips.

Coupon Available To Purchase Through Labor Day

“As a special offer for your blog readers, I am offering 10% off The Everyday Family Chore System and/or Everyday Cooking (print or e-book) through Labor Day! The code for your readers is TOS10books –they can apply it to as many books in their cart as they’d like, but they do need to shop first, apply the 10% discount code last. (Sorry — eccentric cart function) Expires Sept 5.” ~ Vicki Bentley

 

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