Diana Page Jordan | Book Reviews and Inspiration

Taste of Home Cookbook: Cooks Who Care Edition

Edited by Catherine M. Cassidy and Diane Werner

Published September 8th, 2009 (Hardcover) Reader’s Digest

More Info: Taste of Home Cookbook

The top of my refrigerator is bedecked with dozens of unthumbed cookbooks, but there’s something about The Taste of Home Cookbook: Cooks Who Care Edition that makes me feel — well, home.  I interviewed one of the editors today, Catherine Cassidy.  She says the cookbook is for novice cooks all the way up to the experts.  There are more than 1,400 affordable recipes — all from readers, and then tested in the Taste of Home kitchens.

What I love is that each recipe has nutritional information.  Having diabetes — and being fairly new at that — I need all the guidance I can get.  Catherine says,  “In my former life, I was editor of a health magazine.”  I flip open to one of four different meat loaf recipes, and spot one that I recreated last week from memory from my mom’s meat loaf recipe.  My son was puzzled when he ate it, “It’s sweet.”  Yeah, honey, you bet!  I’ll get sweet wherever I can.  But now I see how costly that was in black and white — 37-grams of carbohydrates — damn!

You can probably eat Sweet-and-Sour Meat Loaf though:

1 egg, lightly beaten

5 tablespoons ketchup, divided (I used tomato sauce)

2 tablespoons prepared mustard

1/2 cup dry bread crumbs (I squashed a bunch of stale gluten-free pretzels, cuz I forgot to buy bread crumbs)

2 tablepoons onion soup mix

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 easpoon pepper

1 pound lean ground beet (the leaner the better)

1/4 cup sugar (Mom’s recipe skips this)

2 tablespoons brown sugar (yeah!)

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

Directions: In a large bowl, combine the egg, 2 tablespoons ketchup, mustard, bread crumbs, dry soup mix, salt and pepper.  Crumble beef over mixture and mix well.  Shape into an oval loaf.

Place in a shallow 1-quart microwave-safe dish.  Cover and microwave on high for 10-12 minutes or until the meat is no longer pink, and is 160-degrees. (Microwave wasn’t invented when mom taught me this recipe.  We put the sauce mixture on, and shoved the meat loaf in the oven.)

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the sugars, vinegar and remaining ketchup; drizzle over meat loaf.  Cover and microwave on high for 2-3 minutes longer or until heated through.  Let stand for ten minutes before slicing.

Another cool thing about this cookbook is that most recipes have four variations: classic, time-saver, light, and serves two.

Splashed through the book are profiles of “Cooks Who Care,” men and women who hold potlucks in the park for homeless, bake cookies for troops stationed overseas, create Brown Bags of nutritious food for the poor.

Catherine says “giving back doesn’t have to be monumental or epic — it can be as simple as baking a pie, or making a casserole.”

Now, that’s the holiday spirit.  Or, as Catherine would say, “a random act of cooking kindness.”