Great American Classics Cookbook

Good Housekeeping Great American Classics Cookbook, Editors of Good Housekeeping; Hearst Books, New York, 2004Good Housekeeping Magazine has been around for years! Just think how many writers and food editors they've had and how many thousands of recipes have graced their pages. On top of this how many recipes they've tested before they would publish them--that's a lot of cooking!

Along the way Good Housekeeping has also published many cookbooks, but none will stand the test of time as this one published in 2004. I'm a chef by profession and have used all sorts of cookbooks as reference. Most have been professionally written books just for chefs like me but occasionally I go back to my roots and remember the days of my youth and my foodie mother referencing Good Housekeeping Magazine for cooking something new. That's why I bought the book, and then to my surprise...or not...I found this book to be just as good as some of the professional books I used. I credit the writers and editors of GH for creating an easy to read and easy to use cooking guide. There are hundreds of recipes, all very good to excellent, that span American cooking, north...south...east and west across rivers and plains with ethnic and regional specialties. Good cooking, healthy eating with reasonable sized portions will put a whole library of dishes in your reach...you'll probably not run out of ideas with this book.

Whether you want to make a soup, a salad, roast a chicken, grill an eggplant or make a pie with homemade ice cream, you will be able to do it with the guidance of the recipes in this book and you should feel confident that the recipe will turn out well and please those eating the food. This book would be a great addition to anyone's cookbook collection. Buy it for yourself or give it as a gift and be assured that you or someone else will love it and will make good use of the recipes and cooking information contained in its pages.

This is one of the best American cookbooks ever written!

Several stories exist regarding the origin of ranch dressing. The most quoted one traces it to Alaska in the mid-twentieth century, where Steve Henson created a dry mix of herbs and spices that he blended with mayonnaise and buttermilk to create a creamy dressing. In the 1950s, in Santa Barbara, California, he ran a 120-acre dude ranch called the Hidden Valley & Guest Ranch. The menu often included salad, so Steve perfected his dressing and served it in the dining room. It was so popular that it became the only dressing served at the ranch. Not surprising, guests often requested jars of the dressing to take home. Steve quickly realized that it would be much easier to package the dry mix and let people add in the mayonnaise and buttermilk at home. The simple mix of dry herbs and spices grew into a multi-million dollar mail-order business. And that's how one of America's favorite salad dressings came to be.

1/2 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1/2 teaspoon grated onion
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 garlic clove, cut in half

In small bowl, with wire whisk, mix buttermilk, mayonnaise, parsley, onion, salt, and pepper until blended; stir in garlic. Cover and refrigerate up to 3 days. Remove garlic before serving.