Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals for Kids : Cooking Rocks!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent cookbook for kids of all ages- highly recommended!
Review: I bought this cookbook for my six year old daughter as soon as it came out. We both love it! Mostly, we have been making the recipes in the 7-12 section, but all sections contain recipes that will appeal to everyone's palate. I have been planning one Cooking Rocks dinner into my weekly menu, and that is my daughter's night to cook (with my help, of course). Last night she and her 7 year old friend made the Mexican Rice bowl dinner- they had alot of fun and ate a HUGE amount- probably because THEY made it, or as Rachael says, they had a sense of ownership of it.

(One tip though- as with any cookbook, you may want to cut back on some of the butter, oil and salt used in some of the recipes. A few of them are a little salty or oily for my taste)

This book provides a good foundation in cooking and healthy eating in the future. It teaches the basic methods in cooking, and introduces your child to different fresh herbs and healthy veggies, such as cilantro and arugula. In a world where many young adults don't know how to cook, Rachael does our kids a big service by teaching them how to cook restaurant-quality meals at home.

The spiral-bound format makes it easy to use, and you can't beat the price!


Rating:
Summary: Cooking and Learning to Read
Review: I bought this for my family and the kids seem to really enjoy it. The spiral binding makes it easy to lay flat on the counter top and on turning pages. It's great for me because it's divided by ages so it's a guide for each one of the kids. It actually prevents arguments, kind of, as I tell them that we have to follow the age recommendations for the best results and it works each time. It's easy to read and the younger kids are just beginning to learn how to read which makes it a great hit at our house. We got this as a gift from the grandparents and my sister took our copy home so I ended up buying another one. It's just that good. A great supplement for the book is a self help book that helps us in general family life with sibling fights and all of the other stuff that can apprehend other activities like cooking, drawing, playing, watching TV, and...Mommy CEO is also a treat to have in the house as a parent can turn to the index and find a solution to most daily problems. It's pretty funny, we cook, read and learn with both books as one teaches us how to cook, and the other one is not too far away to grab in case a situation comes up that I need to handle quickly. We love Rachel and we love Jodie and have seen both on TV. Together these two books are a constant mainstay of our family and help us to teach responsibility and life lessons when we are too pooped to think but we still want to get in that special family time.

Rating:
Summary: I love this book
Review: I love all things Rachael Ray, so I bought this book without even hesitating. It is absolutely wonderful, and the recipes turn out great. Rachael is very good at inspiring you to get in the kitchen and start cooking, and her recipes are never intimidating in the least.

Rating:
Summary: I Love this Book
Review: I love my new cookbook. I want to make my family dinner every night now. I already made my family the BBQ Pizza and the chicken Catch-a-tory and the Nice Italian Girls Salad. My dad said 'that was the best salad I ever had.' My dad loves cooking. He has a Rachel Ray cookbook too.

By giving up my coffee habit I realized having that wired up feeling all day clouded my concentration. Did you know one cup of joe raises your blood pressure by 14%! Fortunately for me I was able to find a wonderful tasting replacement made from soyabeans. You brew like coffee and it even helps lower my cholesterol. I found it online at www.S o y c o f f e e.c o m. Gaining this understanding will effect every move you make from this point on and will bring with it the necessity to share it.

Rating:
Summary: Another Hit!!!
Review: I love this book! My kids love this book, and my husband loves the results. I have four little boys, 10, 8, 5 and seven months. Obviously the baby is too young to help out just yet, but the older three couldn't wait to get home and pick out a recipe from the respective chapters in the book. ( 4-6, 7-11 and 12 and up) They have each made a meal from the book and we not only had a healthy and tasty meal to eat, but we had a blast making it.

We also have Emeril's books and a few Cooking with Mickey books. In Emeril's books the one thing I have noticed is the amount of time it can take to make some of the recipes. On a Saturday, I would think nothing of preparing a four course meal that takes three or four hours, but my kids don't have the patience for that yet. The Mickey books, although they are some of my favorites, are rather complex. Rachel Ray's book is simple and yet fun for the beginning cook. The results while not immediate, are tasty and don't require a lot of patience to reproduce.

If you have kids and they show ANY interest at all in cooking or just helping you out...I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: KIDS LOVE TO COOK!
Review: Kids love to cook. It's a natural. They always want to do things that adults do and combine that with food and it's one thing my kids always want to help with. Rachael Ray is the perfect person to write a book on cooking for kids. She has such a child-like enthusiasm for cooking, she seems like a big kid at heart.

This book is sectioned by age giving tips and recipes for each developing age group. And the tips are for parents as well as the kids. Of course, first and foremost these receipes are simple AND fun to prepare. They are things that all kids can do to help.

The section for the very young present very simple ideas with an emphasis on safety and fun, while the chapters for older kids get progressively more detailed and complex. Hey if you can get them to help prepare dinner, why not? They sure aren't volunteering to clean their rooms.

Fun and well-written!

Rating:
Summary: My kids think its great....
Review: OK, so I'll admit it, I can be a little overprotective. Were my kids ever shocked when I announced that THEY were making dinner. My daughters (5 & 7) had a great time, and were very proud of their meal. They are looking forward to trying more, and my oldest has made a grocery list for all the recipes she wants to make.

One thing, I can't imagine anyone eating the portion sizes as they are listed. My kids made the "Pasta and Trees" in the 4-6 section. It calls for 1lb of pasta and says it makes 4 servings. We cut it down to 1/2 lb., and had more than enough for 2 adults and 3 kids (7, 5, & 2). Use common sense, but if you use the amounts listed for pasta, be prepared to have leftovers.

Rating:
Summary: entertaining
Review: Ray's book is a fun book for kids. It's divided into ages- and while some of the recipes arent too adult friendly, a lot of them are good. The book is easy for kids to read. The bad part is the spiral bind. I hate spiral because I'm afraid the pages will detach.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Good Kid's Introduction to Cooking. Could be Better.
Review: `Cooking Rocks' continues in print a Rachael Ray / Food Network theme of cooking with kids, a strong theme already championed by Emeril Lagasse in two recent books and several `Emeril Live' episodes. So, the most obvious comparison on which to evaluate Rachael's book is to compare it with Emeril's efforts.

The premise of both authors' kid's cookbooks is that cooking is fun. While it has been a very long time since I was a kid, I have vivid memories of my attempt, at around the age of 9, with my 6 year old cousin, to make a cake from scratch with our elderly grandmother able to not much more than be an adult presence for two very inexperienced bakers. My mother's reaction upon returning home from work to our efforts, which featured using granulated sugar in place of confectioners sugar, and creating an ungodly mess in the kitchen did nothing to encourage further culinary attempts until I stood for the cooking merit badge in Boy Scouts. I really wish she had Rachael's book and attitude when I was a kid.

The best thing about Rachael's book is her advice to parents and kids about cooking. This is because she was never actually taught how to cook. In the kitchen, there was never the question `Can you do ....?'. It was always put to her to `Please do ....'. Little Rachael would then proceed to figure out how to do it, or ask for help if she did not know or could not work it out herself.

Another good thing about Rachael's book is that recipes are presented by age. There is one chapter for 4-6 year olds, another chapter for 7 years old and up, and a section for 12 years old and up. There are other chapters on beverages and snacks and on submarine sandwiches (sammies in Rayspeak).

The recipes for 4-6 year olds may not appeal to adult tastes. They are offered to both appeal to young adolescents and be doable with a minimum of hot liquids, sharp knives, and electrical appliances other than the stove, wrangled by a GH (Rayspeak for grownup helper). I confess some of the dishes may violate the sensibilities of an adult aware of the evils of additives in commercial preparations, but the recipes may still be a good source of ideas.

The recipes for 7 years and older take a big step up in complexity and palatability. They start to fit the typical Rachael Ray template, and, she claims they are suitable for grownups' tastes as well as for kids. One thing which appeals to me and which I hope appeals to kids is that the book does not dumb down the language. Sushi, paninis, and crudites appear undisguised with any Rayspeak pseudonyms.

There is a fair amount of kid talk that may or may not work. As soon as I reached the third grade, my greatest ambition was to graduate to the adult stacks of our city library, which denied access to all who were less than 12 years of age. This is probably what led me to start buying books, as the material in the children's room simply did not satisfy me after the age of nine. I worry that the more precocious cooks to whom this book is addressed may be impatient with the aspects of the book clearly designed to interest young readers. If you have an especially bright kid who shows a great interest in food and cooking, neither Emeril's nor Rachael's book will be as good as Jamie Oliver's third American book `Happy Days with the Naked Chef'.

All the recipes after this show little difference from material in Rachael Ray's earlier '30 Minute Meal' books. I am happy that although the '30 Minute Meal' trademark is in the title, Ms. Ray doesn't belabor this point in the text, as you do not want to rush things with kids in the kitchen with the abundance of heat, electricity, water, sharp edges, heavy metal, slippery surfaces, and germs.

The biggest difference between Rachael's entry and Emeril's `There's a Chef in My Family' and `There's a Chef in My Soup' is that `Cooking Rocks' addresses three different age groups while Emeril's first book addresses the youngest chef candidates while the second addresses teenage and sub-teenage student cooks who would have no trouble reading the entire book on their own. Another big difference is in the way the authors present themselves and their audience. It is telling that Emeril appears in photographs while his audience is present as cartoons. In Rachael's book, her students appear in photographs while she and her sidekick dog Boo are present as cartoons.

While I am really inclined to prefer Rachael's book, I think Emeril's second book has a lot more substance. Rachael's biggest original contribution to the dialogue is the lecture to adults on how to approach kids and cooking. Rachael also does a great service to the grownup helpers (GH, remember) by giving kid friendly directions to help find many of the ingredients in your favorite megamart. I am of two minds about Rachael's Rayspeak, the most famous example of which is `evoo' standing for extra virgin olive oil. I would have no objections to this if it were a general culinary term, but it is unique to Rachael and her family and, probably now to battalions of her TV fans. I have much less objection to her teaching kids to estimate amounts, as this is how cooks really work. I especially notice she is careful to direct kids to taste for seasoning. I also give Rachael and her publisher high marks for a very reasonable price and spiral binding which makes the book very easy to use in the kitchen.

Rachael is great with her kid sous chefs on TV and has a very light touch in print. I recommend this book, but I cannot rate it higher than Emeril's book, so I give both four stars.