Toll House Tried and True Recipes

Okay, I bought this because it has the recipe for TollHouse chocolate chip cookies written by the lady who created chocolate chip cookies(and no, it wasn't Mrs.Fields). This has a lot of old time kitchen advice my Grandmas would have given if they had given advice. That old time common sense kind of advice, especially for young brides. Look, I've been cooking for 45 years and I can still appreciate good advice. You never stop learning(if you know what's good for you) and this is also why I guess I love Paula Dean so much. She's an old country cook, too. It also compliments my heritage Betty Crocker cookbook from the 60s from which I learned to cook(my mother wasn't a cook, my one grandma lived too far away to spend time in her kitchen, and I couldn't spend ALL my time watching my other grandma cook, though I helped her a lot). I just wish I had watched my Dad make Potato Soup(he was the champian potato soup maker and I don't even think Bobby Flay would have dared issue him a throwdown, having become discouraged right off the bat thinking he had to try to out do my Dad at Potato soup would have made even Paula Dean have second thoughts(sorry, Paula Darlin', but Daddy was the Potato soup KING). Maybe that's because Dad's Grandma was Irish? You betcha!

Thrilled to see this book in print again. I use a worn paperback edition from the 1950's. I remember dining at the Toll House restaurant with my aunts and uncles and cousins to celebrate my grandmother's birthday, probably in the late 1950s. Along with my grandmother and Julia Child's Mastering the Art of Cooking, Ruth Wakefield's recipes taught me to love to cook. Today we can adapt them for lower fat, etc. as all good cooks do adapt recipes. Whether you make Lobster Toll House, or brown bread or mocha chiffon pie the results taste as good today as they did at the restaurant many years ago. A wonderful gift for any aspiring cook or sentimental New Englanders.