Diane Phillips

Slow Cooker Bowls: Top 25 Mouthwatering Recipes To Get Tender Melt-In-The-Mouth Meals by Diane Phillips
Name of this book interested me because I know at the store they have edible bowls you can buy so not sure if this is about all that or not.
Starts out with a table of contents where each dish gets it's own chapter that includes a section on ingredients, one on directions and how to make it faster.
Intro talks about delicious and nutrittious meals and saving time and easy cleanup among other features.
Each recipe includes a title, prep and cook time and servings.
List of ingredients which you should be able to substitute for your healthier dietary needs: low sodium, low fat and low sugar products.
Directions are included along with how to make it faster.
There are NO pictures. There is NO nutritional information.… (mais)

My first reaction to pot pies: Comfort Food Under Cover by Diane Phillips was quite positive, in fact, so positive that I wrote the following even before I settled down to take a closer look. “Most pot pies feature a flour-cased crust, which sometimes contains a bit of flavoring. Indeed, this book’s cover depicts a pot pie that appears to have a puff-pastry top crust. Therefore, it came as a pleasant surprise to see that the crusts in this book are quite unusual and planned to complement the fillings.”

More careful scrutiny altered my opinion. First, what is the definition of pot pie? I don’t know how a stir-fry topped with a noodle pancake just before serving can be called a pot pie. And is meatloaf topped with mashed potatoes a pot pie? How about a mixture that is topped with mixture of crumbs and cheese? I don’t think so. The more I looked at the recipes, the more bizarre the title seemed. Yes, the combinations are usually tasty, but many are not pot pies.

It also occurs to me that many of these recipes are a lot of work. Not only does one have to create the filling, but one has to create a special mixture for the top “crust”. So, instead of having the filling mixture with a relatively simple side dish, one has to cook two special mixtures.

In addition, there are editorial glitches. One pervasive one is that the directions for topping the fillings are not in the same place from recipe to recipe. It may be in the directions for the filling, or it may be in the directions for the topping, or it may be in both. I often had to deliberately look for the instruction. But that is not the only editorial issue. Another example” “[f] in the whipping cream” instead of “fold in the whipped cream”.… (mais)