Soup. Bread. Muffins. Salad. Yum. This is a book full of great recipes and wonderful lore. I enjoy the quotes and anecdotes almost as much as the food, and this is great food. We enjoy the Hillbilly Many-Bean Soup, the Skillet-Sizzled Buttermilk Cornbread, the Glazed Orange Muffins, the Dairy Hollow House Pasta Salad, the Chicken & Cheese Soup with Green Chiles again and again. Some of these recipes even go with us on vacation. There are great directions for making your own soup stocks, and no, you do not have to live in your kitchen all day to do it. We keep finding interesting recipes we want to try, as well as returning to our favorites time & time again. More than a recipe book, this is a visit with a friend who loves to cook. Enjoy!

Although the focus is Soup here, I began using the baking section first. I found definitive buttermilk cornbread, biscuts and muffins, although I have been a good baker for a long time, these were truly the "best in class" and are the standard for my kitchen. I have some favorites now among the extensive soup section but still need to supplement with other cookbooks when I want a meat recipe since the focus here is chicken, fish, vegetable or legumes based. I found the book gives a blueprint that allows me to make some kind of soup out of what is on hand. I also found the "Sandy's Great Lentil Soup with Greens and Garlic" to be a completely fresh, nutritious take on lentils and simple to boot. The small section on Salads is invaluable. I use the Curried Vinaigrette (for the Curried Lentil Salad with Vegetables) on sandwiches as a spread since it keeps forever. The Mexican Corn and Avocado Salad with the Cilantro Vinaigrette gets raves every time and satisfies my Avocado cravings. I couldn't do without this one. It's a good read too with lots of stories and info imbeded in the text.

This book not only contains wonderful, usuable recipes, but it also tries to show you how to cook. It gives you the frame for any recipe, and then with what you have on hand you can feel confident to vary, vary, vary to your heart's content. This is the basis of good cooking, not whether or not you can follow a complicated "conde nast" recipe. In rural Japan it is very difficult to get so many ingrediants people take for granted (fresh dill? out of the question) so this flexibility is very important.

Weather or not, life in a city goes on. And not only life, but lives: this delightful, joyful book follows six very different neighbors in an apartment building, plus a father and son, and several other folks in the neighborhood (a waiter, a baker, a businesswoman)as they go through the pleasures and irritations of a prolonged period of rain, and then (turn the book over) sun. Funny and charming, the book is illustrated perfectly. Wonderfully colorful pictures and unusal perspectives capture perfectly the magical, changing pulses and moods of an active city's residents. The book, though, is not only about weather in a city --- it's about human nature, too. Teachers, as well as parents, will love this book both on its on account and for the questions it can elicit: how do different kinds of weather affect the way you feel? What do you like to do when it rains or when it's sunny? How hot is too hot? What would your "weather wish" be? What do different kinds of weather mean in the city as opposed to the country? And, P.S. : it is gently multi-cultural; the skin colors, family names, religions etc, are as full-spectrum as real life.

This book is really fun and unusual to read especially because half way through the book, it has to be turned upside down to finish reading it! The illustrations are beautiful, vibrant and full of life. The story is poetic and funny at the same time. Highly recommended!

This country inn cookbook is still available in paperback -- see other listing here in Amazon.com

This book is outstanding. The recipes are all tried-and-true, comparatively easy to make, and absolutely wonderful. And each is preceded by a warm, interesting little anecdote -- which a friend once described as "proof that somebody actually ate this". I really love this book, and cannot sufficiently recommend it. (I have all the cookbooks written by this author, and strongly recommend them, as well.)

I couldn't put this book down until I was done. Although it was a mere 107 pages long, it was full of fascinating tidbits. My 3 children (ages 3 to 9) begged me to read more from the book as a reward for getting ready for bed in record time! This will be a book that will be in our collection from now on! Never before have I had such a healthy respect for the brave Pilgrims of Plymouth. Eating the Plates will add a special dimension to our study of the Pilgrims.

If you are a teacher, if you home school your children or even if you're just a mom like me that loves history and wants to share it with her children---Eating The Plates is a great place to get started. I loved this book! Young and old alike will learn what it might have actually been like to have come across the ocean on the Mayflower. I have shared it with children from kindergarten age through junior high(and I myself as well as other adults have enjoyed it). They were all held spellbound and came away having learned a great deal of respect for the people who settled our country and whom we often take for granted--the Pilgrims. They were real people with hopes and dreams! Lucille Recht Penner makes them and their struggles come alive. The recipes at the end of the book were especially fun to try. I highly recommend this book

This book is a great book to read kids before bed time. It's about a girl named Susan as she sleeps in her bed at night. It describes a lot of the things that are going on at the same time in the world like animals in the woods, Johnny playing his saxophone, and a boat on its way to dock. It has the rhythm of a lullabye and is a great nighttime book. I have nothing to add to this book because it's perfect the way it is. So I'm giving it 5-STARS and I recommend you read it, too!

This book has become very special in our family and is our favorite bedtime book. The author takes a child through the nighttime with animals and people in the garden, the city, on the ocean, in her own home. Easy to read or to read to, easy to memorize, and such calming and gentle verse that you'll find yourself repeating it to yourself at day's end: "Up above the earth so far, Hang half a moon and one whole star, Hang one whole star and half a moon: Nighttime will be coming soon.

This was my daughter's favorite book when she was 7 years old. She liked it so much that I ordered it for her from the publisher. It was very reassuring to her to know that "it would be okay." Now, she's almost 20 and she still cherishes this book. When things are going rough, I remind her of
Ms. Dragonwagon's wisdom,"It will be okay."

I first read this when I was in college, working in the children's area of a library about 15 years ago. It impressed me so much that I wrote down all the words! (It is a short book, almost a poem.) This is the conversation of what appears to be a young girl and her mother. The girl asks, "Will it be okay?" and the mother says it will. Then there is a series of "But what if ...?" from the daughter, with the mother answering with "If that happens, you'll handle it this way" answers that can't help but increase the daughter's self-confidence. Even though it appears to be a children's book, adults (especially worriers like me) will find that it provides a good way of looking at the world. It's great!

this novel may never win a literary award, but it helped save my life. i was 14 when i came across this personal & engaging story and i had already been hospitalized once myself for attmepted suicide. finally, i found a character i could truly relate with. someone who was neither perfect nor completely screwed up. she seemed to be a "normal" teenager with some problems coping just like i was. this book did not promise me a rose garden, nor did it make me feel sentenced to a life of insanity. rather, i felt a respected connection. it acknowledged the adult pressures of an adolescent, did not talk down to me, pander to me, or seem terribly unrealistic.

~it gave me hope~

though it has been over a decade since this book came into my life, i still credit it with being a shaping influence on the woman i am now.

Eventhough I read this book for the first time when I was sixteen years old, I still feel as if I could read it over and over again, and would never tire of it. Its subjects are real and dealt with in a way that everyday people may relate to. It was the starting point for my own literary adveture that gave me an apetite for heart-warming and heart-breaking books.

My daughter received this book as a gift when she was just 4. As a child who loves language and animals, she was thrilled with the lilting lyric poetry and the tale of a bat caught in the tourist-filled dining room. The main character "strange Melissa" is appealing in its originality, sensitivity and all too rare celebration of a female heroine. Any observant and intuitive child would find her an especially sympathetic character. That being said, in my opinion, the poetry is the reason we return to the book again and again. Crescent Dragonwagon has distinguished herself with her flowing verse that is not only sophisticated but delightful to the ear. We consider it on par with David Kirk (of Miss Spider fame) and Dr. Seuss. Enjoy!