The Parenting Cookbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Cooking, Eating, and Entertaining for Today's Families

Tips, advice, and strategies for feeding children of all ages accompany more than 325 easy-to-follow recipes that emphasize both the need for tasty, healthful food and the time constraints that parents face. 12,500 first printing. $10,000 ad/promo.

In these times of pressure and over scheduling, the idea of the entire family gathering regularly to share a meal may seem a quaint concept. Maintaining that that scenario is more easily within reach than many family cooks imagine, Gunst (a Parenting columnist and author of Roasting) combines tasty recipes with sensible advice on issues from stocking the pantry to tempting the picky eater. To promote healthful, enjoyable family meals, she suggests that parents project a positive attitude about eating new foods and limit their own intake of junk food. She observes that kids may be weaned from their attachment to a pizza/macaroni/peanut butter diet by becoming involved in food choices and preparation; practical advice to that end includes taking children to farm stands or ethnic food stores and letting them select items, as well as enlisting their help in making snacks and helping to fix the family dinner. The 325 recipes, ranging from breakfast to birthday party menus, are fairly quick to assemble, especially if the kids help, and don't require exotic items. Although Gunst favors healthy food, she's no Puritan. Recipes for Chocolate Pretzels and some killer desserts like Peanut Butter Fondue are included. Nutritional analyses are given for each dish. Such dishes as Grilled Marinated Pork Tenderloin and Chicken and Sausage Paella may well have kids choosing the family dinner table over the local fast food outlet.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Along with more than 300 recipes, this big cookbook includes readable, informative essays and mini-essays on such topics as picky eaters and "Entertaining with Kids, or How To Have a Dinner Party Without Losing Your Mind." There are separate chapters of quick recipes for weekday breakfasts, lunches, and dinners and somewhat more involved ones for weekend meals; snacks and birthday parties also get their own chapters. Gunst, a Parenting contributor and columnist, is the author of several appealing cookbooks, including Roasting (LJ 12/90) and Leftovers (LJ 12/93), which obviously provided inspiration for some of the good recipes and suggestions here. Highly recommended.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It is a bona fide asset that writer and cookbook editor Gunst, along with Parenting magazine staffers, hasn't produced a cutesy, green-eggs-and-ham-type recipe collection. Although the focus certainly is partly on meals that kids will eat and enjoy (without coercion), the authors deal with quick, good-tasting, nutritional foodstuffs. Preparation in 10 minutes or less is not unheard of here, yet few flash-frozen or convenience packaged foods are used. Instead, Gunst relies on seasonal produce and streamlines the normal laundry list of ingredients to accommodate the demands of meals in literally minutes. In addition, the more than 325 recipes represent some departures from what has traditionally been considered children's fare. Her quasiencyclopedia concludes with great advice on various topics scattered throughout the book, such as the importance of family dining and how to handle picky eaters. Barbara Jacobs