The Junior League at Home

It's got great recipes in it. I love it. Can hardly wait to use it. It was recommended by a friend.

This `Junior League' cookbook is almost exactly what you would expect from such an organization, where all recipes appear to come from home cooks. I give this book four stars (with a caveat) instead of three because it surpasses expectations in at least two ways. First, it provides four complete entertaining and family menus per month, with instructions on day before and other advance preparations to prepare for the meal. Second, the range of dishes is very international. I was surprised to find a good recipe for Filipino spring rolls. This is not exactly Iowa church supper fare.My biggest caveats about this book follow.First, while the recipes are arranged by month, I believe no thought was given to whether or not fresh ingredients were appropriate for that month. The first menu is serving artichokes in January. I know the recipe calls for canned artichokes, but the sense of oddness persists. The presence of green beans and green grapes on the same menu is a testament to the incredible food distribution network which can bring California and South American produce to a Pennsylvania produce market in virtually any month of the year. But this market still does not have artichokes in January.Second, the recipes are from many different sources, and these sources are neither professional chefs nor professional food writers. This means the quality of the recipes will be very uneven. One cannot depend on the fact that all recipes will have a uniform reliability as you would if the book in your hand was from Ina Garten or Sheila Lukins or Rachael Ray. This is important if your objective is to improve your cooking skills. As an amateur who wishes to learn new techniques from most dishes I make, I would sooner go to a book by Mario Batali or Jaques Pepin.Third, there are a lot of prepared food ingredients in the recipes. If, like me, you are adverse to ingredients which come from the Merck Index rather than the farmer's market, I would just as soon stay away from such recipes.Lastly, the organization of recipes is a little odd in that types of dishes are overlaid onto the monthly chapters. This would have been much better done by having 24 chapters rather than 12 which address two different purposes.I must say this book is printed and bound so that it is very easy to use in the kitchen, as long as you have plenty of room for it's 8 ½ by 11 spiral bound format in your kitchen. This format lies flat and is very easy to photocopy pages. It also has a good index, which you may not find in most volunteer / fund raiser books of this type.Recommended for home cooks who are not `foodies' intent on learning cooking techniques or food lore.

This cookbook is charming to read, gives great ideas of meals to serve, and includes many delicious recipes. The blueberry muffins are fabulous!

I was so excited to see that the Junior League has come out with another "best of" cookbook! And just in time for the holidays. I have the previous two books, the Junior League Celebration Cookbook and the Junior League Centennial Cookbook, and I have loved giving them to family and friends as gifts. Now, here's another. It's beautiful, and I can't wait to try out some of the recipes. The other two have not disappointed, and I don't expect this one to either!