Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics is the essential Ina Garten cookbook, focusing on the techniques behind her elegant food and easy entertaining style, and offering nearly a hundred brand-new recipes that will become trusted favorites. Ina Garten’s bestselling cookbooks have con-sistently provided accessible, subtly sophisticated recipes ranging from French classics made easy to delicious, simple home cooking. In Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics, Ina truly breaks down her ideas on flavor, examining the ingredients and techniques that are the foundation of her easy, refined style.Here Ina covers the essentials, from ten ways to boost the flavors of your ingredients to ten things not to serve at a party, as well as professional tips that make successful baking, cooking, and entertaining a breeze. The recipes—crowd-pleasers like Lobster Corn Chowder, Tuscan Lemon Chicken, and Easy Sticky Buns—demonstrate Ina’s talent for transforming fresh, easy-to-find ingredients into elegant mea...

#Aweesome as usual (2008-11-22) I have everyone of Ina s cookbooks and she continues to maintain consistency with simple and quality ingredients. Her recipes are delicious and she makes gourmet easy and interesting. I look forward to anything she has to write.

#Diva does it again! (2008-11-20) Outstanding recipes. . . . tried the tuscan chicken. . . instead of grilling, I baked and served with rosemary, lemon zest and parm polenta. Great dinner!

#Back to Basics, Indeed! (2008-11-18) Like most folks, I was introduced to Ms. Garten via her Barefoot Contessa teevee show on the Food Network. As I was collecting (and still do) French influenced cookbooks, I purchased Barefoot in Paris (along with the companion travel journey), and fell further in love with her. Ms. Garten s latest offers a collection of savory recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner along with the cocktail hour and sections on soups, vegetables and desserts. Each chapter is prefaced with tips like flavor enhancers and serving suggestions. A section is dedicat...

#always love ina!!! (2008-11-16) I bought this book the day it came out and it s been great because these are the recipes from this seasons show. I m such an Ina fan!!! Her recipes are always simple but always impressive. I strongly recommend this book!

#It s Important to Get Back to Basics (2008-11-15) Back to Basics is a great cookbook for me, easy to follow for - the cooking challenged. During these stressful times cooking presents a great creative outlet and I am determined to get better and relax into it and this book really helps. I wish some of the recipes were a bit healthier since food and mood correlate and we do have an obesity epidemic fueled by stress and empty hearts. As I discuss in my book, Addicted to Stress: A Woman s 7 Step Program to Reclaim Joy and Spontaneity in Life, you can develop your personal emotional me...

In the 10 years since she served up her first 30-minute meal—and thousands of delectable dinners later— Rachael Ray has learned just about all there is to know about getting a great tasting meal on the table in a hurry, whether it is one of her patented 30-minute miracles or something just a tad more involved for a special gathering. Rachael’s Big Orange Book is the ultimate resource for busy cooks. Need kitchen inspiration? It’s all here and it’s all new—and bigger than ever!Just one for dinner tonight? Forget the cold cereal. Rach has a chapter of recipes that make dining on your own a thoroughly civilized occasion, with great meals that won’t leave you with a fridge full of leftovers. Vegetarians on the guest list? No problem! Choose from dozens of meat-free meals that are every bit as satisfying as your tried-and-true standards and savory enough to please the carnivores in your crowd. Observing a Kosher menu? Check out the selection of menus just for Kosher cooks, all...

#It s big. And it s orange. (2008-11-14) You know, it s sort of pointless to review this in some ways. It s Rachael Ray, you know what you re getting when you pick up the book. No more, no less. And that seems to be my main problem with this one. Some celebrity chefs have made a point over their careers to do a grand summation of their work at least once, Julia Child s The Way to Cook, for example, or Jacques Pepin s Complete Techniques, or Anthony Bourdain s Les Halles Cookbook. Some, on the other hand, have kind of tripped through their careers providing occasional roundups of w...

#A fine cookbook (2008-11-11) Why the title? Ray herself says (Page 8): It s orange simply because orange is my favorite color. Simple enough! This has the normal complement of 30 minute meals. However, there are some features to this volume that attracted me to order it: vegetarian meals, holiday menus, some recipes longer than 30 minutes (breaking out of one s mold is a plus to me), Kosher meals. The vegetarian is especially important for me now, since my family is asking me to develop some more vegetarian meals (more on this below). The recipes here are doable by amateur/wannabe...

#Quintessential Rachael (2008-11-06) If you watch Ray s show or have other cookbooks by the author, and you looked through Rachael Ray s Big Orange Book without glancing at the cover, you would immediately know it was hers. To begin with, it s loaded with her unique language--EVOO (extra virgin olive oil,) sammies (sandwiches,) and more. The largest section of the book is comprised of Ray s famous 30 minute meals. This section is broken down to soups & sammies, pasta, chicken, beef, ham & pork and fish. Ever since my husband got back from a business trip in California and told me ab...

Food Network star Guy Fieri takes you on a tour of America s most colorful diners, drive-ins, and dives in this tie-in to his enormously popular television show, complete with recipes, photos, and memorabilia. Packed with Guy s iconic personality, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives follows his hot-rod trips around the country, mapping out the best places most of us have never heard of. From digging in at legendary burger joint the Squeeze Inn in Sacramento, California, baking Peanut Pie from Virginia Diner in Wakefield, Virginia, or kicking back with Pete s Rubbed and Almost Fried Turkey Sandwich from Panini Pete s in Fairhope, Alabama, Guy showcases the amazing personalities, fascinating stories, and outrageously good food offered by these American treasures.

#Interesting Profile of American Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (2008-11-21) Guy Fieri s Diners, Drive-in s and Dives is a very interesting concept for a book, adapted from his hit show. Each restaurant is profiled with some history and claim to fame. The book is sorted by part of the USA, rather than the type of meal. The photos are of the restaurants and owners, not of the recipes in the book. In the back, the book lists all the recipes by breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc. and also lists all the restaurants profiled along with their addresses and a checklist, if you manage to make...

#A little disappointing ... (2008-11-20) I really wanted to LOVE this book, I really did. I m such a huge fan of Guy Fieri s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives television show, and I ve been hoping he d come out with a cookbook containing recipes featured on his shows. I m a sucker for great road food, and often go out of my way to try a hole in the wall diner. Guy has traveled the US highlighting exactly the kinds of places I love to visit. His show on Food Network is loads of fun. No one can describe food like Guy, with his blend of humor and killer adjectives. The humor doesn t tra...

#Great Fun With Food! (2008-11-20) The book does a good job of translating Guy Fieri s personality to the written word. It is really fun to get a flavor of the food around the country. I had fun looking at my home area and seeing what he though were the standouts in my state. A very fun book. Although there are recipes in the book this is primarily a book about food and the love of food rather then how to make food. I did try some of the recipes and they were good. More interesting to me was the stories of the restaurants and the people that run them.

#Tasty recipes! (2008-11-19) While I m not a big fan of the show, I really enjoyed this cookbook. I am the kind of person who always likes to find out people s secret recipes for the foods that others rave about. In this book, Guy visits several places most of us have never heard about, but they are places that the locals love and swarm to. Then he picks a dish that everyone who frequents that place loves. . . and he gives us the recipe! I ve tried a few so far and they have been not only easy to prepare, but delicious. Even if you don t love the Guy, you ll love this cookbook...

#Health Hazard and Happy About It (2008-11-15) I don t have a TV so I have never seen Guy Fieri s show or even heard of him. After reading this book, I hope he has health insurance. The book consists of profiles of the country s top greasy spoons and dives. The atmosphere is casual and the calories astronomic. Personally, I stopped eating this type of food on a regular basis, so the subject matter isn t as interesting as it would have been a decade ago. Still, with a title like this book has, you know what you are getting into. A typical entry takes up four pages or so and in...

What to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times.

#nice one (2008-11-21) This book has amazing information but i wish a bit more time was spent on its layout. It is very hard to read back when using it for quick refernce, and there are no graphics, it is just written as though its one big essay. Unfortunate because it has so much good informatin but is wasted with its hard-to-use format.

#good info to learn at 42 (2008-11-20) a little filler in the begining. great info for someone that has grown up eating processed junk my whole life, wish i would have read this at sixteen.

#Beyond eye opening... a must read for food consumers (2008-11-18) What has happened to the food over the past 50 years? Plenty. This book outlines in great detail the ol mighty dollar and its influence on our food chain. Food is no longer food. This book breaks down in detail what happened (which by the way is never boring) and ways for your family to eat healthy and partake in REAL FOOD. The advice is sound. This is something you need to read. It is time to understand what has happened to FOOD and in a small way, account for the many alignments we face with modern western diets ...

#Ayurveda and Food equals Health & Longevity (2008-11-14) This book is welcome. I use it together with the Yale University School of Medicine Dr. Frank John Ninivaggi book: Ayurveda: A Comprehensive Guide To Traditional Indian Medicine for the West. Both give practical info about how and what to east for great health in body, mind, and spirit. I recommend them both.

#Just Eat Food. Real Food. (2008-11-06) Don t you want any of this good food?, my Great Aunt Margaret beams at me over the buffet aisle. I answer, If any of it were good, I would want it. It is the 1970 s and a new kind of restaurant came to our rural county: the smorgasbord. Adult eyes widened at the sight of aisles of food, a melange of red, orange, brown and white gooey side dishes punctuated by varieties of tough grisly meat. They wonder that I don t want to load my plate as they do. I equally marveled over their reaction. The food tasted off, powdery when it should be tooth...