COOKBOOK REVIEW: The Looneyspoons Collection

The Looneyspoons Collection by Janet and Greta Podleski
Granet Publishing | November 1, 2011 | Trade Paperback


I have decided instead of starting a whole new blog for cookbooks and food, that I would just include a Foodie Friday post where I review a cookbook and share a recipe from it!


Today I am reviewing and sharing from the Looneyspoon gals, whom I adore.  They are a super fun sister duo that focus on healthy eating without sacrificing flavour.  Their recipes are easy and fun, and kids love the wacky names that they choose for them.  One of our old standbys around here is the Lord of the Wings recipe, I make it about once a month, and it is a huge HUGE hit.  


So far I have tried three recipes, they were all soup.   I am a huge fan of soup.  ANYway, the three that I tried were:

• Thai One On -  Exotic sweet potato and coconut soup with shrimp  -  This soup was excellent and super easy to make.  What I loved about it was the coconut milk flavour.  I did not add the shrimp, but I can honestly say that with the shrimp it would have probably made a 9 instead of the 8.5 that I gave it out of 10.  Super tasty. 
• Bean Me Up, Scotty Spicy, high-fiber black bean soup with a sour cream swirl-  This was rated a 10 by my finicky husband (especially in the soup department!) and by me, my oldest daughter gave it an 8 out of 10.  This was so super yummy I can't even articulate it well enough to describe.  The only thing I added was fried corn tortilla strips, super easy.  You slice up corn tortillas into 1/2 inch strips and then fry them in vegetable oil until slightly brown and crispy. 
• The Squash Court - Silky butternut squash soup with pears and ginger - I was the only one that tried this soup and I gave it a 7.  I'm not sure about the "silky" part of this soup, but it was pretty tasty.  The only thing I might omit if I ever make it again is the 3/4 cup light cream, it doesn't really need it.  

Here is the recipe (credit - Janet and Greta Podleski Looneyspoons Collection) * if someone in book blog land knows if for some reason I am not allowed to publish recipes from books, can you let me know??!  Thanks!

THE SQUASH COURT

2 tsp  olive oil or butter

1 cup chopped onion

1 tsp minced garlic

1 tbsp  grated gingerroot

1 tsp curry powder

1/2 tsp ground cumin

4 cups reduced-sodium chicken or vegetable 

broth

3 cups peeled and cubed butternut squash

2 cups peeled and chopped pears

1 cup peeled and chopped carrots

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

3/4 cup 5 % cream or evaporated milk 2%

• Heat olive oil in large pot over medium heat.  Add onions and garlic.  Cook and stir until onions begin to soften about 3 minutes.  Add gingerroot, curry powder and ground cumin.  Mix well and cook for 30 more seconds. (I asked a friend who is a chef why I always had to cook curry powder for a bit before adding broth and he said it was to keep the curry from being gritty)
• Add broth, squash, pears, carrots, salt and pepper.  Bring mixture to a boil.  Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, for 12 to 15 minutes or until squash and carrots are tender.  Stir occasionally.
• Working in two batches, carefully transfer soup to a blender and puree until smooth.  Soup will be very thick (mine wasn't).  Return pureed soup to pot and stir in cream.  Serve hot.  

               

So far I love this book, and there are over 300 recipes in it!  I highly recommend it!


RATING:  4 out of 5 spoons

WISHLIST WEDNESDAY

Is a weekly meme hosted by Book Chick City.  It gives us all a chance to post about books we are wishing for!

Like many of my fellow bibliophiles I have an ever growing wishlist, and an actual wishlist that is in my hubby's iPhone as we speak! Here are some  of the highlights:

Barbara Kinsolver's The Lucana

I have always been a HUGE fan of Barbara Kingsolver.  I read The Poisonwood Bible and LOVED it, and my other one which I actually loved even more was The Bean Trees. 

The reviews for this have been all over the place, but I'll take my chances! 

Here's the blurb from HarperCollins:
In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.


Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.


Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption.

With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.

AND: 

PIONEER WOMAN COOKS by Ree Drummond   

I wish I could verbalize HOW EXCITED I AM ABOUT THIS BOOK!!!!  I found her blog (back when it was a blog and not the amazing empire that the charming Ree has created!) about 3 years ago, and have watched it grow from a blog to an INCREDIBLE funny, informative, generous, and yummy site.  You MUST MUST MUST check it out.  Click here.  I'll wait.   She was recently featured on the Bonnie Hunt show, and as is her way she shared every step of the way with her readers.  She is A-W-E-S-O-M-E.   I make her super yummy Pecan Caramel Apple pie all of the time, and can't WAIT to get my hands on this book.  Her photography is amazing too.  
 
Okay, enough raving.   
 

The other one I am wishing for is A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire.  It's the third in the Oz series and I just loved the first two, so I am dying to read the last one. 
 
Here's the blurb from HarperCollins for this one:
Since Wicked was first published in 1995, millions of readers have discovered Gregory Maguire's fantastically encyclopedic Oz, a world filled with characters both familiar and new, darkly conceived and daringly reimagined. In the much-anticipated third volume of the Wicked Years, we return to Oz, seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion—the once tiny cub defended by Elphaba in Wicked.



While civil war looms in Oz, a tetchy oracle named Yackle prepares for death. Before her final hour, an enigmatic figure known as Brrr—the Cowardly Lion—arrives searching for information about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. As payment, Yackle, who hovered on the sidelines of Elphaba's life, demands some answers of her own.

Brrr surrenders his story to the ailing maunt: Abandoned as a cub, his earliest memories are gluey hazes, and his path from infancy in the Great Gillikin Forest is no Yellow Brick Road. Seeking to redress an early mistake, he trudges through a swamp of ghosts, becomes implicated in a massacre of trolls, and falls in love with a forbidding Cat princess. In the wake of laws that oppress talking Animals, he avoids a jail sentence by agreeing to serve as a lackey to the war-mongering Emperor of Oz.


A Lion Among Men chronicles a battle of wits hastened by the Emerald City's approaching armies. What does the Lion know of the whereabouts of the Witch's boy, Liir? What can Yackle reveal about the auguries of the Clock of the Time Dragon? And what of the Grimmerie, the magic book that vanished as quickly as Elphaba? Is destiny ever arbitrary? Can those tarnished by infamy escape their sobriquets—cowardly, wicked, brainless, criminally earnest—to claim their own histories, to live honorably within their own skins before they're skinned alive?

At once a portrait of a would-be survivor and a panoramic glimpse of a world gone shrill with war fever, Gregory Maguire's new novel is written with the sympathy and power that have made his books contemporary classics.