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 Great gift for budding cooks. Nov 15, 2009
Great book for begining cooks. My grand daughter is going to love it. I'll be looking forward to lots of lunches with her.
 Paula Deen's My First Cookbook Sep 10, 2009
This book is definately full of Paula's southern charm and the recipes are very good. Not all of them are very healthy, she uses lots of butter as she is known for, but they are tasty. She has everything from breakfast foods to lunch to dinner and after school snacks so there is good variety. It would be better if the directions to make things actually had real illustrations or photos so kids who don't read well yet could follow the directions better, but our family has still enjoyed using it. The recipes for the most part are pretty simple and include "bull's eyes" for breakfast, "stone soup", and even ideas for older kids to make things for mom and dad on special occasions like mother's day and father's day. Definately a good one to add any cookbook collection.
Great Jul 15, 2009
I love this cookbook. There are many recipes that my family will eat!! My daughter loves to help in the kitchen. It is presented in a way that she is able to follow along!
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Cute cookbook that will grow with your little chef-but watch the calories Apr 22, 2009
I decided to check this cookbook out of our local library because I was getting tired of ordering cookbooks sight unseen, and then being disappointed with the recipes once I read through the book. We have several children's cookbooks at our house, and most of them have the same basic recipes with slight variations in the ingredients used to make the same dish. They all offer grilled cheese, pancakes, French toast, smoothies, and mac and cheese. I would like to broaden my kids' food choices.
Paula's cookbook has some nice original recipes in her book, including pumpkin muffins, chicken pot pie, sausage quiche, stone soup, stuffed shells, ambrosia salad, egg salad, beef teriyaki kabobs with grilled pineapple, and campfire stew. All the recipes have pictures (drawn, not actual photos) of the ingredients that you use to make the recipe, and the ingredient list is very easy to follow. The "what you'll do section" that describes what you need to do to make the recipe is a little more complex. Very young chefs will not be able to read the directions themselves, and there are no graphic illustrations for them to visually follow--a drawback to me about this book. Many of the recipes require a lot of help from adults including chopping, slicing and dicing, frying, and boiling, so I don't think a child under the age of 5 would have a lot of involvement in many of the recipes. (This is more from a safety standpoint of using knives and hot grease and boiling water than anything else.) The recipes range from very easy (cookies on a stick--2 ingredients needed) to somewhat complex (Spinach salad with homemade dressing or vanilla cupcakes from scratch that include a whopping 14 ingredients for the cupcakes and icing). I like that she chose to use "from scratch" recipes so kids don't think that making cupcakes is just going to the store and buying a boxed mix. Because there is a varying degree of difficulty to the recipes, the book will grow with your child as their skills progress. Once they master spreading cream cheese into celery, they can progress to chopping and grating.
She also includes several helpful sections in the beginning of the book, including Safety First!; a glossary of terms that define cooking skills like knead, pare, mince, sift, and saute; How to Measure; How to Set a Table; and the all important Good Manners. It's a very nice touch that all parents will appreciate.
There were two drawbacks to the book, which kept me from giving it a much higher rating. One is the lack of photographs that accompany the recipes finished product. There are very small hand drawn pictures with each recipe, but they do not always depict what the food should look like. The illustrator definitely took liberties with how some of the dishes should have looked. I think it is extremely important to have photographs in children's cookbooks. When my son and I cook together, we always look at the pictures so we know how our dish is supposed to turn out. The other drawback is the lack of "healthy" recipes that should have been included in a children's cookbook. With childhood obesity on the rise, it would have been nice to include a section on healthy foods and treats, and taken out some of the highly butter and sugar-laden recipes that are plentiful.
For example, the Monkey Bread calls for 1 stick of butter, a cup of white sugar, a cup of brown sugar and 3 (yes THREE) cans of refrigerated biscuits. At 4 grams of fat per biscuit times 10 servings in 3 cans (it calls for the 10 count cans), that's 120 grams of fat (NOT including the butter). The butter adds another 264 grams of fat (168 grams of saturated fat) for a total of 384 grams of fat in one recipe. And, at 360 mg of sodium per biscuit, that's 10,800 mg of sodium (not including other ingredients) in the recipe. That's a lot of sodium. The two sugars combined add another 1610 calories to the recipe. The recipe serves 8. My quick calculations show that one serving of this bread is 828 calories per serving with 48 grams of fat. It is mind-boggling to think just how bad this recipe is for you. Granted, you would not choose to eat this everyday, but for goodness sakes, there had to be a way to cut down on the fat, sugar and sodium content to make it a little more nutritious--or less bad for you.
Thankfully, not all of the recipes in this cookbook are like the Monkey Bread in their nutritional content, and she does a very good job of using a wide variety of food types to design her recipe choices. If she plans a follow up to this book, I certainly hope that she adds a section of healthy foods and adds photographs. If I could give the book 3-1/2 stars, I would, but the calorie-rich foods alone lost a full star in my mind. Your children will enjoy cooking from this book and it is a good introduction to cooking for children.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Well, it's Paula Deen! Mar 31, 2009
Any cookbook from Paula Deen is going to be great.
I purchased this for my 10 year old nephew who is a future chef.
The recipes are perfect for children, but best of all, everything is described in detail. Each tool, a whisk for example, will have a picture and instructions on how to use it. Cooking terms are explained so that beginners can easily understand.
I recommend this for children and anyone who is learning to cook for the first time.
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