Country Breakfasts: Four Seasons of Cozy Morning Meals

Rating:
Summary: Inspiration
Review: Love breakfast, and love this cookbook. You can't go wrong with Ken's recipes. Everything I've tried has been good. A little excitement w/ the Gingerbread Pancakes, which were not as sweet as expected, but with the Cranberry Compote he recommends, became a staple in our household. He has great combinations and seeing them gives me great new ideas to try.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Breakfasts
Review: Our copy of "Country Breakfasts" bears the sure sign of a favored cookbook: it's splattered with the faint signs of breakfasts past. While the quality of Haedrich's recipes isn't consistent, it doesn't really matter; he keeps coming up with fantastic, sometimes unusual ideas, many of which do turn out to be stunning, and that's enough to forgive a few flops.

I have to give you both a recommendation and a warning. This book contains a recipe for Banana-Stuffed French Toast with Banana Cream. It was so good that we couldn't stop eating it until we were well past the point where common sense told us to stop, and we spent the rest of the morning holding our stomachs and saying, "ow... that was so good... ow... do we have any more? ow..."

Recipes include some very good pancakes and waffles, cereals and grains, a variety of egg recipes, vegetable recipes, meat recipes, sandwiches, quick breads, elegant fare, fruits, jellies and such, and beverages--in other words, a dazzling array of breakfast foods. The Blueberry Cream Cake is to-die-for; we've made it again and again.

The recipes are fairly simple; even the elegant stuff doesn't take much time and effort. The layout is clear and easy to read. Most of the ingredients are ordinary, everyday items available at any grocery store, with a few exceptions.

We haven't adored everything in this cookbook. Some of the whole grain recipes are a little much for us, and some things are just kind of there as far as quality goes. But the stuff that's good--and that's the majority of it--is very good.

All in all, this book is definitely a worthwhile purchase for any breakfast-lover.