sweetcece's Full Review: Entertaining with Regis & Kathie Lee : Year-Round ...
When Regis Philbun and Kathie Lee Gifford were together on daytime television, I would take a moment when I was home during the day to watch their program. The program was highly entertaining, had lots of humor, and the guests that they had on the program were always interesting.
So, when I was in the store a few weeks ago before Christmas, I saw a book that looked rather interesting to me. That book was Entertaining with Regis & Kathie Lee: Year-Round Holiday Recipes, Entertaining Tips, and Party Ideas. (boy is that a mouthful!)
Considering that I like to collect cookbooks and especially those involving special occasion entertaining, I felt this would be a great purchase for me to add to my collection. I thought perhaps that I could try some of the ideas for recipes with family should they come to visit for specific holidays.
However, after viewing this book, I have come to the conclusion that unless you have the following : (1) A Lot of Money, (2)A Personal Kitchen Staff, and (3) Lots of extra time to spend planning entertainment -- that Entertaining with Regis and Kathie Lee is a book that is unrealistic and should be avoided.
Contents
Chapters within Entertaining with Regis and Kathie Lee are separated by holiday season or event. These titles include the following:
Hello New Year Brunch
Super Bowl Party Fare
Let's Celebrate Romance - Happy Valentine's Day
Luck o' the Irish
April Showers
Happy Easter & Passover -- Recipes with Panache
Mother's Day and Father's Day Favorites
The Race is On - Kentucky Derby Day
Memorable Memorial Days
Fantastic Fourth of July and Other Summertime Sensations
Harvest Moon Celebrations
Let's All Give Thanks
Happy Holidays!
Also includes within this book is a section of prize winners from "Live!" Good Housekeeping's Favorite Family Recipe Contest.
In most of the sections there are commentaries about the seasons or holidays from Regis and Kathie Lee. In addition in "boxed" off areas, there are helpful hints on how to prepare particular foods and other specialized information.
Overall the book has 288 pages of information and if you purchase the hardback edition, there's a very attractive dust cover with Regis and Kathie Lee in formal attire.
Commentary of the Book
When I saw the formal wear of Regis and Kathie Lee, I should have known that something was "wrong". As I opened the book and saw the contents and the format I became disgusted with my purchase.
Why?
Because it seems to me that everything is written out in some kind of format and design where only someone who is "society oriented" could cook, entertain, and so forth in this fashion.
Since Super Bowl Sunday is coming soon, I looked at the recipes for this area and become disgusted. While there are somewhat "normal" recipes for hot wings and chili (they made fancy names of them all where it is a total mouthful), there are unreal recipes such as the following:
Chef Paul's Midtown Meat Loaf
Southwest Chicken Casserole
Fried Green Plantains (Tostones)
And let's not forget this one!
Grilled Chicken Breast with Sweet Corn-Apple Relish and Barbecued Fire-Roasted Onions?
Are these items that you would actually serve at a Super Bowl Party? I don't know about you but if I made such things for my friends they would think I was out of my mind!
So, if you want to know my "honest and brutal epinion" like they encourage us to write out here online, thoughts on this book are this -- This is a worthless book for entertaining unless you have inhouse kitchen personnel, are rich, or have loads of spare time to waste on planning entertainment.
Anything Else?
In defense of Entertaining with Regis and Kathie Lee, I will say this -- the book does have a wide variety of recipes that you are not likely to find anywhere else. In addition the personal commentaries by Regis and Kathie Lee are interesting and there are many candid photographs from the their television program.
Recommendation
Well, I suppose you can imagine my recommendation for purchasing Entertaining with Regis and Kathie Lee. Unless you collect cookbooks, collect memorabilia about Regis and Kathie Lee or just enjoy collecting books in general I would suggest that you pass this book by.
In my opinion, this book is out of touch with the general population's ability to entertain and thus is a worthless book on entertaining for the holidays.
The 13.5 million viewers of Live with Regis & Kathie Lee made their cookbook a major nationwide bestseller. Now the two TV favorites have collected th...More at Alibris
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