At Home Cafe: Great Food and Fun for Everyone [With Recipe Cards]

by Helen DeFrance and Leslie Carpenter

Book Overview

At Home Cafe is a book for families. It's about bringing families back into the heart of the home-the kitchen. This book is a sampling of the authors' tried and true recipes that are fun to create,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0976042509
• ISBN13: 9780976042501
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Basil Leaf Publications
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.7" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent family cookbook, bring the family together!

Genre: Non Fiction/Cook Book Title: At Home Café AUTHOR: Helen DeFrance and Leslie Carpenter Step back to a time when families gathered in the kitchen to prepare the meals and enjoy some quality time together. Now start some new traditions in your home today! This is the heart of At Home Café. A very unique cookbook, At Home Café offers simplistic, basic yet delicious recipes that young children and adults can enjoy preparing together. Large print, Kid Notes and colorful illustrations make this an attractive book for the whole family. Chapters include `It's a school night supper', `Unfancy French', Sleep over party and `Keep your eyes on pies'. All of the recipes include `Kid Notes' giving added instructions and tips for youngsters. There is even a take away shopping list in the back of the book. This is a great cookbook for new cooks young or old. This reviewer tried some of the recipes and can vouch for their simplicity and excellent results. As someone that loves cooking and baking with grandchildren, I found this book an inspiration to all parents and grandparents to go back to a time of family. Forget the takeout and instant frozen meals, even once a week and spend some quality time with your children or grandchildren. The results will be very gratifying. At Home Café is more than a cookbook; it is a support tool for Kids Are Cooking!Leslie Carpenter and Helen DeFrance are former caterers that met while teaching cooking classes at The Everyday Gourmet, a Jackson, Mississippi, cooking school. Soon they were teaching month-long children's courses together and developing a joint venture known as Kids Are Cooking! with Helen and Leslie, now offering classes at preschools, schools, cooking schools, and luxury hotels. The authors prefer a hands-on approach to teaching kids to cook, involving them in every aspect of meal preparation from menu planning to grocery shopping, cooking, eating the delicious results, and cleaning up. With the publication of At Home Café, Helen and Leslie are taking their message of bringing families together through cooking on the road and into homes all across America. Recommended by Reviewer: Shirley Roe, Allbooks Review.

great family cooking!

We love this cookbook at our house. The recipes are so easy to follow, even for a child. The writers break down steps to a level that an adult would not need, but this gives the young cook independence and confidence in being the leader of a cooking activity. Plus, the recipes we've tried have all been tasty, even for the adult palate! Bon apetit! P.S. - The shopping lists are key to the learning experience for a young cook. Perfect extra touch! This book makes a great gift!

Pass the Creole seasoning: one of my favorite cookbooks

At Home Cafe has become, over the few weeks that I've used it, one of my most used and favorite cookbooks. I'm buying a copy for my sister in law to use for her family. The kidsnotes are fabulous for including even the smallest helper; I've used them for my eleven year old and interpreted them for my three year old with much success. And most important, most of the recipes taste really good. I mean that. The recipes, for the most part are delicious. The "designer" sandwiches like Greek roll ups and homey basics like cheesy meatloaf are new staples at our house. Forget opening a can for your tomato soup. Try their recipe for home made. It's worth the trouble. So why didn't I give it five stars? The menus are too ambitious, not all of the recipes deserve five stars and the portions they are designed for are too large. For example, for the sample menus that the ladies provide for "a school night", I had to spend three and half hours in the kitchen. My family swallowed the orange almond salad, stuffed themselves on carrot fries made in the oven, had seconds on cheesy meatloaf and raved about creamed corn cut off the cob, but was it something I wanted to do on a nightly basis? Some of the recipes were not exactly bombs, but were disappointments. Like that "Absolutely Delicious Danish" that was surprisingly easy to make? It wasn't delicious, merely palatable, a bit of a let down. It was one of the few things I made that wasn't eaten by my boys. The Buffalo Chicken sandwiches were a busy cooks nightmare, calling for marinating, then grilling, then slicing and saucing and rolling up the chicken. It just wasn't worth the trouble for a sandwich which only tasted OK. The other thing that I don't like about the book is that I have to cut down the recipes, which make portions of eight or ten. The layout of the book, for the most part, is great. But don't be distracted by the cute paintings, there aren't any helpful *photos* of the dishes, and some of them are a little complicated, though most are not. And as other reviewers have said, the directions are blessedly simple and easy to follow. A great help for the new cook, except that a new cook could really use pictures, too. If you're really just starting out, something more comprehensive, like Julia Child's "How To Cook" might be even more appropriate. This book outlines the details of how to make each dish, even down to the details of how to scrape carrots and shred cheese, but it seems to be more for someone who can cook a little bit and has kids to share the kitchen with, I think. It lacks the refinement of an approach on par with Ms. Child's. And for its audience, there are several delicious and easy to prepare recipes that I have used. But be aware that this is an introduction to a different way of life. This is an introduction to big southern homecooked meals by two ladies from Mississippi. You'll have to go out and buy Bisquick (for a recipe that copies Popeye's biscuits!), onions,garlic, salsa,

Definitely Not Just for Kids

At Home Cafe is presented as a cookbook for families, parents and kids cooking together. But it truly addresses a much broader audience: college kids and young professionals fending for themselves, harried young parents seeking to nurture and comfort with limited time and money, as well as the mature cook in need of inspiration and update. In the charming and accessible cookbook, Helen DeFrance and Leslie Carpenter present great home cooking prepared simply. Beautifully illustrated by Dea Dea Baker, At Home Cafe lures the hungry away from the fast food chain with such America contemporary staples as Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits, On the Go A.M. Breakfast Sandwich, Tempting Taco Quesadillas and Buffalo Chicken Wraps with Yummy Blue Cheese. The cookbook is arranged by suggested meal menus that allow for mix and match fun. Cook one dish or cook it all Expanding the traditional American palate, it offers Mexican, Italian and French recipes with clear, simple instructions using readily available ingredients. Think Myer's Favorite Buttermilk Pie meets Totally Terrific Tiramisu. It is as a remedy for the time-starved, however, where At Home Cafe arguably makes its most unique contribution. Tucked away inside the back cover is a pocket of convenient shopping lists for each meal.

Excellent Family Cookbook

This is a fantastic cookbook for the whole family. There are terrific recipes that even the most inexperienced cook can succeed with AND that even the pickiest eater will be amazed by! I was very impressed with the easy lay out and set up. There are even pull out grocery lists in the back of the book to make shopping and meal planning a breeze. This is the best, most fun cookbook I've run across in a while- and it's a beautiful book too! I would recommend this as a gift or a treat for yourself....SO much fun to cook with!