I was very disappointed in this book. It seems to have been rushed to press. It just mulls over the same things, what Jennifer's jobs were and her heavy drinking. There must have been more to this interesting lady. Wish it had been better. Maybe someone will write a better book about this woman.

Ok, it's not War and Peace, but for all us who miss Jennifer Paterson or who never knew the range of her unconventionality from the TV show, this is a quick and delightful ride driven by those who knew and loved her. Loving testaments from those who fired her for throwing all the dishes out the window, those she insulted, those she cooked for, are published alongside photos from her birth to old age, and of her helmet being carried behind her coffin at her funeral . Let your hair down, pour a glass, and dig this one!

if anything was going to put me off the idea of going anywhere near italy, this book would be it. unfortunate tone, boring and uninfluential - (don't) keep trying.

In planning a 16 day driving tour of Northern Italy, I found this book to be enormously useful. I have driven around Portugal, Norway, Switzerland, etc. but had never been to Italy. Maps in the front show specific stretches of road and areas of particular interest, and give the page number of the chapter that describes each route. The introduction to each chapter gives a succinct overview of the route that gives one a good sense of what to expect, and then describes the route in greater detail--direct route vs. scenic route, sights and towns along the route, accommodations and food, sightseeing, etc. For my purposes, I was especially pleased with the descriptions of the scenery and with the "side tracks" feature, which describes worthwhile sidetrips. I was able to note the routes that I preferred and plot out a practical itinerary. Then I turned to other books (Rick Steves and the Rough Guide to Italy) to get more detail about some of the places we were going to visit.

In summary, I think this is a great book for planning driving tours of Italy--vastly better than any other I have found, including Frommer's "Italy's Best-Loved Driving Tours".

This book is a good cookbook for someone who is just beginning to experiment with cooking meat on the outdoor grill. It focuses primarily on indirect cooking methods. The book is easy to read and informative. Unfortunately, the recipes for barbcue are tomato-based recipes, not REAL barbecue like we have here in North Carolina. :-)

i didnt find this book to be that helpful

I found this book rather disappointing. Let talk about the size of this book. It is slightly larger than a larger post card. It has lots of illustrations, so it has less space for recipes. The recipes, and information are helpful, insightful, and useful, but there are not very many recipes. The folks at Cooking Illustrated are always top notch when it comes to content, but the packaging of their material lacks in this book. I was hoping for a book to be filled with salads, salad dressing recipes, and more. This book did not deliver to those expectations.

Just like her "Quick Cook" book, the "Menus" book has fabulous photos and recipes that do work, but each RECIPE takes at least a full hour; there is no way one person could do a whole menu in an hour unless he/she had six arms. Also, like the other book, many of the ingredients are hard to find, and almost all of the recipes call for fresh herbs (and you can tell that dried herbs just wouldn't work).

When first reading, I thought I'd find many of my favorites (I've lived here for 8 years & we eat out frequently in Boston & surrounding areas), but I found a surprising omission of many of the area's "gem" restaurants.
In particular, there was a huge oversight in not including Centro in Cambridge. What a fabulous rustic Italian spot, co-owned by one of the country's top chefs, Rene Michelena. It has also received rave press reviews so that omission was a shocker.
I suggest more homework next time.

The staff of Cook's Illustrated are a talented lot, and the editor, Christopher Kimball, is an incisive and witty food writer. All the more disappointing, therefore, to find their "Cook's Guide to Boston Restaurants" so limited in scope and so frequently off the mark. While providing reviews of chain restaurants (e.g. Bugaboo Creek), outstanding local restaurants (e.g. Campania) aren't mentioned at all. Ostensibly a guide to 200 Boston area restaurants "where the locals eat", such choices are unfortunate. This small volume is in format essentially a "Zagat-style" guide, presenting for each entry a brief review plus verbatim (often contradictory) comments from a cohort of non-professional critics, and providing ratings of food, decor, service on a numerical scale. The fact that the Cook's Guide to Boston Restaurants is ostensibly prepared by Boston-area locals does not provide it with new insights or more thoughtful choices than the nationally-based Zagat. I am sorry that I cannot recommend this promising new book with much enthusiasm: Zagat does it better.

Book Too Tiny Reviewer: A reader from Erie, CO United States I normally am an advocate of any book or magazine published by Cook's Illustrated magazine. Unfortunately, this series of books are too small and the print too tiny to be practical. You have to hold the book too close to your eyes to read it which makes it totally impractical for putting in your cookbook holder to refer to while cooking. I like the recipes but it would be nice if I could read them without straining by eyes.