Author(s): Miriam Jacobs
Publisher: Globe Pequot
Publication Date: 2003-10-01
Pages: 208
Review: I was looking for some creative ideas to make lunch more interesting, but this book covered too many of the obvious choices. STill, I found some new ideas and I think it was worth buying.This is the perfect lunch cookbook for me. It is an adult lunch cookbook (though I’m sure many of the recipes are kid friendly). It is healthy without being dietetic. The recipes are easy. Everything I have tried has turned out really well. There are creative ideas in here which have inspired me to think of other lunch ideas. This book is exactly what I was looking for.As another reviewer noted, this is truly a gem of a cookbook! I found a copy at the library and only wish it were still being sold by Amazon.

I am a busy mom who works part-time outside the home. I have a somewhat-picky husband and we both tend to eat breakfast and lunch at work because we’re rushing out the door in the morning. I like to bake muffins and breads that we can take with us.

I look for the following things when choosing recipes for baked goods:

-Whole grain flour (at least 50%)

-Not a ton of sugar

-Not a ton of fat

-Healthy “extras” like fruits and/or vegetables included (apples, grated zucchini or carrot, etc)

Sometimes, I find one or two of these features; rarely do I find them all. But the baking recipes in this book focus on all of these! Nearly every muffin, cake, or bar “brownie” here has these elements. Also, her banana muffins are the only recipe I’ve ever found that uses this much banana (three bananas in a batch of nine muffins!), which is very helpful when that ripe bunch of bananas on the counter becomes the very overripe bunch of bananas about to go into the trash because the freezer is already stuffed full of overripe bananas to be used later.

The Carrot Blondies are sooooo good… kind of like a mild, not-too-sweet carrot cake.

The Oriental Zucchini-Apple Salad is very unique and surprised me with how good it is. The dressing that goes with it is very much like a light pesto; I am planning to use it in other dishes to substitute for the typical full-fat pesto sauce.

For ease of preparation, the author does rely heavily on a food processor for mixing ingredients. I have only a small food processor that doesn’t always hold all the batter for one recipe. However, I’ve been able to work around this by using either my KitchenAid stand mixer or my Cuisinart immersion blender (depending on the thickness of the batter).

I will admit that the Apple Pie Cake was a disappointment. Like another reviewer here, I expected something different–more like apple pie filling with a bit of cake-i-ness to hold it together. Instead, the apples were tough, the flavor was blah, and the texture was unappealing. I felt a little embarrassed serving it to my guests.

That notwithstanding, I still give this book five stars, because I have never found another source for so many muffin/baked goods recipes that are truly healthy, easy, and delicious! Like another reviewer noted, I also love that the ingredients are easy to find and keep on hand… no unusual and expensive “sugar substitutes” or strange “oil alternatives” found only at health food stores. This is a little gem of a cookbook, and if you can find it, get it!Many of these recipes looked good, and healthy, so I flagged several to try. Maybe it’s luck of the draw, but the first two we tried were terrible. I left my husband with the recipe for Baked Sandwiches and then kicked myself for not thinking it through more thoroughly. It’s more like a strata with eggs, and there is no seasoning, not even salt and pepper. It was a sodden, bland mess.

Second, the Apple Pie Cake–OK, I admit that when I read the recipe, I knew it was drastically different than anything I’d seen. I was guessing it would basically be like apple pie filling with just enough binding to hold the apples together. Unfortunately, this recipe, too, was underspiced, and the baking time of 25 min meant that the apples were still crunchy and the “batter” still unset. I put it back in for another 30 min. This was not inedible, but certainly nothing I’d ever make again.

The most useful part of the book may be lists of different sandwich ideas. I have one more recipe I will try before returning this to the library for good. some good recipes, however, I was looking for more basic/quick lunch ideas for my kids. This book is aimed more towards adults than kids, and while the recipes seem good, they are a little more involved and time consuming than I was looking for.
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