Kids’ Cooking (and Giveaway!): Once Upon a Time in the Kitchen, by Carol Odell

The Sweet Pea was super excited when she found this cookbook in the library, Once Upon a Time in the Kitchen by Carol Odell. She loves books. She loves cooking. It was a perfect marriage. When she showed me the recipes and asked if she could review it*, I gave an enthusiastic “Yes!”

Not only does the book feature simple, whole food recipes easy enough for any child to make by himself, it also includes an excerpt from 21 favorite children’s stories. Each recipe is matched with a story, so that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is accompanied by a recipe for The Queen of Hearts’ Jam Tarts, and The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle has inspired the Do-very-little Sausages–a recipe that my kiddos found hilarious in its simplicity.

Here is the Sweet Pea’s assessment of her time spent cooking with Carol Odell’s charming book:

I picked this cookbook because you can read a fragment of a story in which the recipe is used. For instance, you can make Shortbread Stars after reading “The Fir Tree”. The book gives you a portion of the story (in this case the story of “The Fir Tree”) and a recipe to go with each story.

The cookbook that I chose has a picture [an illustration, not a photograph] for each story. “The Fir Tree” has a painting of a fir tree. I’ve never exactly liked cookbooks with out photographs for some reason [She gets that from her mama. Oy!]. Other than that, it was a great cookbook.

I think that the recipes in here are British recipes. The book has British ingredients in it. I really liked that if you don’t like salami in a salad, you can leave it out and it doesn’t mess up the whole recipe. I also liked how specific they were in the directions.

I was able to make most of the recipes by myself.  When my friend came over, she and I made Cheese Pillows. Except, they didn’t turn out like cheese “pillows”. They turned out more like cheese “lumps”. But it was really good, anyway.

 My “Queen of Hearts Jam Tarts” were probably my favorite.  They were nice and sweet, and the dough that I used was really good, too. I want to make it again!

 The recipes are really easy to follow, and fun to make. I think that other kids would really enjoy the cookbook.

* Review posts are my opinions on items that were sent to me free of charge. The items were given to me, but the thoughts and opinions are my own. I do not provide reviews of every item sent to me and only review items that I find to be truly worthy of recommendation.

Sleeping Bear Press is giving away two copies of Once Upon a Time in the Kitchen! To enter:

We’ll randomly choose two winners to receive a free copy of Carol Odell’s Once Upon a Time in the Kitchen on January 15th!