Contests Books

my son read this at his school and liked it so much we bought it.

Paging through this cookbook is always a bit of an adventure and promises to yield a delicious dish for just about every occasion. Whether you are looking for a dessert (some of the best recipes in this book are for desserts) or for a main dish, there is something for everyone in this book.

Some of my family's favorites include Creamy Broccoli and Rice Soup, Savory Crescent Chicken Squares, and Ramen Vegetable Beef Stir-Fry. Our favorite goodies include Caramel-Filled Chocolate Cookies, Pecan Pie Surprise Bars, Raspberry Filled White Chocolate Bars, Caramel Apple Cake, Peanut Butter Crunch Cake, and Cookie Cheesecake Squares.

I have used this cookbook on many occasions and although I love the recipes, I wish that the book was in a binder instead of a hardcover book. Also, I tend to like cookbooks with more pictures, but I felt that the stories that were included about many of the winners was an excellent addition to this book. Overall, I highly enjoy trying many of these recipes and I feel it is an excellent addition to any cookbook collection.

Enjoy!

A very useful book, even if you use one or two of the incentives this will give you great results, i have personally tried over ten in my restaurant and have had great results. Reduce the price though Amazon!

very informative for dirt and flat to med. banked asphalt racers. i would have liked more info on high banked asphalt set-ups and the difference between med. and high applications. this book was very helpful as we built our car and got a baseline set-up. i highly recomend reading steve smith books to pepole that we race with, but most of them think they know everything or they want to set their car up like every other "joe" out at the track . it's amazing to me what things you can learn from these books and when you try to discuss issues with these guys they have no clue what your talking about. thank-you for the very informative books.

McCutcheon develops his ideas further than ever in this slim volume. Concise, challenging, and provocative. Guaranteed to tick you off, if you care about the theory of religion.

`Retro Baking' by Maureen Fischer, a food columnist and editor at `women's' magazines has also been a judge at many traditional recipe contests. And, the recipes in this book are advertised, per the subtitle, to be winning recipes at these food contests, updated `for today'.

This book is a booth in `comfort food central'. It does not contain many of the comfort food classics, even those classics which are baked such as macaroni and cheese and meat loaf, but it makes up for these with lots of other casserole recipes straight from the darkest 1950s, in the freedom which followed the lifting of World War II rationing and before the great influx of foreign food influences spearheaded by Julia Child, Alice Waters, pizza shops, Hispanic immigrations, and Asian immigrations from Southeast Asia.

For a list price of about $17, we get:

Breads and Rolls - 17 recipes, primarily breakfast breads and variations on white bread with cheese.
Savory Bakery - 15 recipes of casseroles with veal, chicken, salmon, bacon, and beef.
Cookies - 20 recipes with lots of peanut butter and a nice assortment of press, drop, and roll cookies.
Cakes - 19 recipes with several uncommon recipes and a few old standards such as chocolate cake.
Pies - 15 recipes with lots of apple and other fruit pies and custard pies.
Other Desserts - 15 recipes with cobblers, crumbles, upside down cakes.

106 decent recipes for $17 is not too bad as most cookbooks go, if the recipes fit your needs and produce good results. I believe these recipes will produce good results if you are already an accomplished cook and baker. The instructions are typical of the kind of recipes you will find in a church fundraising cookbook. Among other things, it means that lots of things are inexact and there are lots of inconsistencies from one recipe to the next. For example, yeast is sometimes specified as `one packet' and sometimes as `2 ¼ teaspoons', even though these mean exactly the same thing. All yeast is `fast acting', but sometimes it is bloomed with warm water and sometimes it is dumped into the other ingredients as you would do with `instant yeast'. The temperature of the yeast blooming water is never more precise than `warm'. My point is that an experienced cook would take all of these things in stride, but an inexperienced cook may be tripped up by, for example, making the water too hot and kill the yeast. Other imprecision's are seen in not specifying the cut of meat to be used in many recipes. Probably the worst of the instructions are in heating meat. One instruction tells us to saute until tender. Sautéing will never tenderize meat. As it becomes more thoroughly cooked, it will become firmer to the touch. Another very odd instruction has us browning a pork chop on one side, flipping it over, and going off to spend 15 minutes to prepare a relish with no instructions to take the poor chop off the heat to prevent it from drying out.

But then again, you will not buy this book to learn how to cook or bake. For that task, there are excellent alternatives, my favorite light but thorough ones being Wayne Harley Brachman's `American Desserts' and Judith Fertig's `All American Desserts'. For savory baking, check out Jim Villas' `Crazy for Casseroles'. All three books are high on comfort and high on sound cooking instruction.

The illustrations in this volume really tell the story that this book is about memories of the fifties. I am simply amazed that the book designers have been able to collect so many kitchy illustrations. While these are great to look at, they can be very misleading when it comes to figuring out the associated recipe. The picture on the page with the lemon pie recipe shows a lemon meringue pie, yet there is no trace of meringue in the recipe. Oops.

I will give the author / editor a fair amount of credit for using almost exclusively fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables, in spite of illustrations showing canned fruit pie fillings, the recipes use fresh fruits. There is a fair representation of canned soups in some recipes, but nothing overbearing.

The biggest surprise in the book is that there is not a single credit given to the people who came up with these recipes either with the recipe, in acknowledgments, or in a credits or bibliography page. There is not even a reference to where these recipes may have been published. While this book is a `fluff piece', part of a whole series of retro themed books, this does not excuse it, in my mind for either claiming to be something it is not, or failing to provide credit if it is in fact a compilation of contest winning recipes.

These recipes will work if you are an experienced cook and will be very successful at clogging your arteries even if you are not an experienced cook. If you are in love with instant nostalgia, buy this book. Otherwise, check out Wayne Harley Brachman's books on `American Desserts' and `Retro Desserts'.

This book's underlying issue is the idea that the pursuit of literacy is, consequently, the pursuit of a dream and a way out of poverty. In fact, Song-ho often repeats the phrase, "If I only knew how to read and write..." The message is clear--through persistence, dedication, and with a kind heart, one can achieve anything he or she puts his or her mind to. I believe this book to be very enlightening for children who have difficulties in school, especially if a classroom teacher or parent discusses the book from a critical, socially aware point of view. Illuminate children to the fact that "poor" children are nonetheless very rich in heart and spirit, and are as hopeful as any child. Also point out that even though this book takes place in the nineteenth century, its theme will resonate for any generation. I recommend this book wholeheartedly!

At Homestead High School, the members of the Math Club enjoy spending Saturdays attending math contests. When we went to the Santa Clara Contest, I was anxious about knowing some of the problems. We found a copy of this book, and because of it, we were able to know what types of questions might be asked of us. The only problem with this book is that there are no annotations, and the contest is a lot easier than the questions in the book.

This hand-sized publication chronicles the results of the 1st Advanced Architecture Contest sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC). With the goal of stimulating social, technical and cultural progress, the international competition's intention was to be a precursor to more extensive research to be performed at the IAAC on the theme of the Self-Sufficient House.

As you can imagine, attracting 529 participants from 6 continents, the entries demonstrate an impressive diversity of ideas and development. The editors managed to locate each entry ideologically within the eight categories of 'Bio and Bug', 'Blow and Form', 'Common and Related', 'Modulated and Cost', 'Position and Site', 'Territorial and Community', 'Theory' and 'Wrapped'. Admittedly, the categories are nebulous at times and this may be due partly to the fact that many entries simply straddle multiple ideas and defy categorization.

The format and layout is easy-to-use and predictable with each entry presented on two pages with several entries earning additional pages where warranted. What is impressive about the work as a whole is the level of sophistication of the majority of the entries. Some are very diagrammatically and ideologically well-developed while others delve into the reality of the assembly and fabrication of the proposed systems. Because of the compact size of the publication and limited pages dedicated to each work, you sometimes get the impression that you're not seeing the entire picture as it relates to each work individually.

There are a wealth of ideas to be discovered here and IAAC should be commended on the quality of their dissemination of the information. Now, if only all competitions resulted in similar publications.

This book was pretty good but it wasn't one of those bookswhere you can't put it down. It was interesting, no real conflict/climax.