Annabel KarmelRezensionen

This spends a bit too long telling you how to make purees (I never made any purees) but eventually gets around to some good introductory foods around half way through. I've not used a huge number of the recipes, but the cheese and apple quesadillas are a favourite.½

I've been looking for years for a really interesting, solid kids' cookbook. However, it seems that the vast majority are of the "how many ways can you combine peanut butter and various types of sugar" and never actually teach kids how to cook anything, just different ways to arrange snacks. Plus, they all have the same things because there's a limit to what you can make without an oven or sharp utensils!

Ok, rant over, because I have FOUND THE BOOK.

DK has done it again, with Annabel Karmel's Cook it together. Tons of photographs, simple recipes to follow, and really interesting, actual food!

The book begins with a section on spices and herbs, along with instructions on growing your own parsley. The main book is divided up into a main ingredient with several accompanying recipes. Each recipe has clearly marked steps, a list of ingredients, and tips from the author.

For example, the section on "Tomatoes" gives facts about the fruit and instructions on growing, then we get to the recipes - tomato bruschetta and tomato soup. Under "Corn" there's corn and chicken pasta salad and corn fritters. We learn how to make potato wedges and souffles, and in the section on rice there's a recipe for arancini (rice balls with cheese in the middle), and paella with seafood and chicken. There's fun food, snacks, and desserts as well - banana bites, banana butterfly cakes, strawberry layers, strawberry cheesecakes, baked apples and apple meringue tarts. And how many kids' cooking books teach you how to make apple and chicken curry, teriyaki-glazed salmon skewers, honey cakes, and your own chocolate truffles? The book finishes up with dark and white chocolate cakes, fruit brulee and chicken pitas with yogurt and mint dressing!

Everything is clearly illustrated with photographs, the instructions appear to be clear and simple, and my only regret is that when they printed the US version they gave it a pink spine - and the cupcakes on the front are kinda girly. This, however, has not deterred an excited stream of patrons from checking this book out. The only thing keeping it from constantly circulating is its repose on my shelf for a few months while I tried to find time to test out some of the recipes. Alas, that will have to wait, although I did purchase risotto rice for the arancini...

Verdict: You NEED this book in your library! The best kids' cooking book I've seen in a long time. Great variety of recipes, perfect for many different skills and ingredients, and food that both adults and kids will want to try!

ISBN: 9780756643027; Published May 2009 by DK; Borrowed from the library; Purchased for the library

This is a well laid out book for children of baby through toddler years.

The recipes are presented in section according to the child's palette growth and ability to eat various foods.

I really liked this book for it's many pictures and thoughtful layout of children's eating habits.

The breakfast recipes are GREAT! Quick, simple easy to prep in a few minutes.

Unfortunately, the author didn't really seem to test her dinner recipes. I found a lot of them to be a LARGE amount of prep and cook (what toddler waits 1.5 hours for a dinner? Really?) and would NOT recommend the dinner recipes, due to time, not taste.

I would like to encourage the author to create another cookbook for just breakfast recipes and drop the dinner recipes completely.

I loved this book when my daughter was little. Baby food menu planning. It appealed to the frustrated Martha Stewart in me, who was impatient for Bella to grow up. Lots of fun.

I love love love love absolutely love this book! As my AppleBlossom has just started eating some pureed foods I have found myself curious about what is to come next. Then I happened upon Annabel Karmel. I just have to get more of her books!!

This book with the Top 100 Finger Foods has 100 recipes that are very easy to understand with great ingredients that I want to eat them. Literally as I turn the pages, my mouth waters. Not only are these finger food meals healthy, but they are fun and creative for the imagination. With as much fun as AppleBlossom has already with foods of different flavors, I am quite certain that she will enjoy the varying textures and colors of these finger food recipes.

Reading through this recipe book I am quite taken with Annabel Karmel and I am eager to jump into the book that comes before this one with Baby Purees. I highly recommend this book.

*Thanks to Jessica Purcell of Atria Books for providing a copy for review.*

This is an attractive and useful guide filled with recipes for anyone with questions about feeding babies.

I have a 2-and-a-half-year-old and a nine-month-old. We've gone through the first foods stage with the first, obviously, and are in the middle of it with the youngest. We are a vegetarian family that eats seafood about once a week and enjoy cooking as often as possible.

The highlight of the book is its focus on preparing your own food for your child. It encourages readers to skip the jar and make your own food, for health, taste, and cost. We used baby food from the store almost entirely for our first child. Before receiving this book, we decided to try out the baby food mill for the second and couldn't believe we didn't do it before. It's so fast and easy and we feel better that we're not creating the packaging waste, wasting our money, and feeding our baby less of the sodium-laden jarred food. This book offers plenty of recipes for the different stages of feeding your baby and tips for easily making your own food. We will refer to it often over the coming months.

The bulk of the book is taken up with information on feeding your baby in a Q and A format. It goes into everything from when and how to begin solid food, allergies, health, and more. This information is organized by age along with the recipes.

I appreciated the strong emphasis on breastfeeding in the first six months and on waiting until then for the first solid foods. The recipes in that section for breastfeeding moms were a nice touch!

One quibble is that the book is just a bit too normed for meat-eaters. I don't expect a general interest book about cooking or food to ignore meat, but I didn't appreciate vegetarian/vegan issues being relegated to a couple of Q&As and a recipe. Some of the language also made it seem as if red meat was essential for babies and breastfeeding moms for its iron. In many places, though, the author nicely refers to tofu, lentils, and other legumes alongside meat without specifically mentioning it's for vegetarians. I would recommend a few minor changes to include more such language that doesn't "ghettoize" vegetarians and maybe a few more vegetarian recipes or suggested vegetarian substitutions to existing meat-based recipes.

Finally, I found it interesting that the author seems to me overly concerned with sanitizing everything but not as concerned with allergies. Maybe this is just a cultural difference that happens when our modern cultures get obsessed with health fads. Allergies seem to be a big one now and both of our children have been allergic to a protein in cow's milk that comes through the breast milk. Children typically outgrow it, as our first did, by the time they are a year old. From discussions with doctors and other parents, this allergy does not seem uncommon, yet it isn't mentioned in the portion of the book on breastfeeding. The book also seems to be rushing some foods that we have learned to wait until at least one year for certain foods like dairy, eggs, nut butters, wheat, and seafood. I understand that there's no real consensus on when to first introduce those foods, but I found it interesting that the author is liberal with introducing those foods early, but is strict when it comes to sanitizing everything. She recommends sanitizing everything in the food preparation and serving process and using previously boiled water to rinse bottles coming out of the dishwasher and to serve to baby in her food and drink. I know that sanitation is important, but this just seemed a little overboard to me.

Overall, though, my criticisms of the book aren't too strong, even the vegetarian one. This is an excellent book that will be used and enjoyed.

There are two different types of books in the baby food cookbook genre--books that primarily answer questions about what a child should be eating, when, and books that primarily provide recipes. First Meals and More is an excellent addition to the former type.

Although a few of the terms may be hard to understand for an American mom unused to British terminology, in all this book is an excellent resource. It will be the book I now recommend to moms who want to know how and what to cook for their infants and young toddlers.

It would be ambitious to make great lunchboxes every day, but this book gets you a fair way to doing it. Lots of easy and tasty recipes. I made several recipes from the book, over and over. Good for dinners and deserts too.

This book has useful information and some interesting recipes, but like all parenting books, it shows the author's biases. Of course, when an author's biases don't match your own, you tend to think less of the book. In terms of the "Your Questions Answered" the book did a good job of addressing many different topics that new parents are curious about, although some of the answers were vastly different than our doctor gave us. As a cookbook, however, there was much to be desired. Most of which is no fault of the author. The interspersing of recipes with the question and answer things made it more difficult to find and use recipes, and the hardcover binding makes it nearly impossible to leave the book open to a specific recipe while preparing. Also, for us, by time our son was ready for the more elaborate meals in this book, it was simpler to tailor our own meals to his diet and make one meal for the family rather than preparing him one of the meals from this book.

Offering more or less general advice on parenting related to food as well as recipes, this book does neither one well. Some recipies are fine others are lousy, but the jumbled organization makes it a chore to read and difficult to use as a reference. The author also offers advice for which she has no apparent expertise and for which she cites no other authorities. If the book did not pretend to be authoritative and uncontroversial this might be OK. She is not a nutritionist, but seems to pretend to be one.½

I had this & used it a lot during my baby's first year (then it got destroyed by me accidentally dropping some water on it!) The recipes are good & inventive & healthy, a good resource for a first time mum who wants to learn about weaning. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because some of the recipes are a bit over the top, i.e. too complicated (for god's sake, you don't make home-made stock when you're a new mum with a non-sleeping 6 month old!) But all in all, I would recommend this, at the very least, it's inspiring.

Its a fairly good book, however it is very similar to Annabel Karmel's other books. This one is more of a Q&A book, and does have some good info. I like how the questions start with early info, and the questions cover a lot of information. The pictures are colorful and the format is very engaging. The only drawback is that once you have one of her books, it feels like the same book revisited. Good on its own, but if you have a couple of her books, than you've got most of what's here.

There were plus and minuses to this book but overall I did like it. It offered a lot of different recipies that I could prepare that were different. While I didn't agree with all the information I did find it helpful for my infant. I will be using it as he progresses in age.

**update--I found this book more helpful now that my son is almost a year old. The recipies are now allowing me to make his favorites with variations.½

From the moment you pick it up, it's clearly a DK book, with all the plusses and minuses that go along with that. The book is nicely laid out, with bright, attractive photos and pages. I found it slightly frustrating to flip through the book for the recipes, which are scattered by age grouping, and interspersed with the question-and-answer format that makes up the rest of the book's content. The table of contents is going to be your best friend - there you can quickly glance for recipes (organized by age, highlighted from the rest of the content by bold font.)

The content itself is good and informative - I particularly enjoyed the section on breastfeeding, but am sure I'll use the later sections more as the opportunity arises. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to have feeding choices other than jars and Gerber's graduates.

While the advice in this book is very helpful to a first time mom who is learning how to feed an infant, I found myself wishing that there were more actual recipes. However, the recipes that are included are quite good and my daughter has enjoyed most of the ones we've tried.

Filled with beautiful photos, as are all DK books, and overflowing with tips and tricks for developing healthy eating habits from the start.

As a first time mother with an eight month old who is starting solids, I should have gotten more from this book than I did. I found the the Q and A format was not as conducive to learning about the general concepts of feeding - a bit too much was repeated and there were things presented as fact that I know from other books are opinions (as a scientist this is my problem with many baby books, particularly those not written by doctors...). It should be mentioned that the book spans from breastfeeding to three years - so some of the questions have quite short answers relative to what is available elsewhere - this is particularly true of the breastfeeding portion which I felt was unnecessary. There is an excellent selection of recipes and Karmel presents some interesting ideas on how to season food for babies.½

This informational book is filled with bright, beautiful photographs of the foods featured in the recipes. There are also tip sections included throughout.

I loved making baby food for my babies, so this book was interesting to me. I'll be passing it along to a friend who's baby girl is 5 months old.

This book could be used in the classroom during a family or baby study, but it could also be a useful book to have on hand for families to check out. When I was teaching I had a family bookshelf for this purpose. Young students may enjoy cooking some of the finger foods that are designed for ease of eating.

This book is better than most in the genre: my favorite thing about is its general simplicity. Many childcare books overly complicate childcare and feeding and stress out the reader even more than before they picked it up for help! This book does not, instead it gives helpful tips. Also, this book covers much more than feeding alone, as the title suggests, which makes makes it a little more helpful but of course a little less in depth on feeding as well. The layout of the book is what really makes it stand apart from others. The colors and font changes serve to emphasize the questions form the answers so that it is easy to scan and dosen't read like a textbook. This is VERY helpful for quick look ups. A detailed table of contents is also unexpected in this type of book and greatly appreciated. Basicly my pros for this book is that it is simple, clear, and concise. If you have already read many in-depth parenting books, this book might now have that much new information for you. The book includes recipies which to my dissapointment almost always include meat and dairy. Common allergens are also included in the recipies often. The only other issue I had with content is that the book's discussion of breastfeeding was limited and hardly touched on the issue of engorgement which in my opinion is absolutely necessary knowledge for any mother-to-be. The body changes rapidly in the period after birth and this can be stressful and painful for many women and NEEDS to be addressed! Treatments are not dicussed for engorgement pain, overabundance or milk or not enough milk which is really required in this type of book for such common problems. This is not a book that helps with problems a family might encounter in the earlier years, but for a perfectly healthy baby.

I greatly enjoyed this book. I have been reading lots of pregnancy and baby-care books in preparation for my first pregnancy and I can definitely say that this book was the most inviting and pleasurable to read of the lot. Karmel's question and answer format presents the material in small, easy-to-conquer chunks. The layout with brightly colored pages, intermittent recipes, and the occasional drawing or photo made the book very appealing. Again and again, I found myself reaching for this book over other, more textbook-like tomes.

The content didn't quite live up to the appeal of the book, however. Most irritating, Karmel repeated herself over and over. Yes, if someone picked up the book just for toddler ideas they might get all the ideas that were presented in the first parts, but, how many times does she need to talk about EFAs (Essential Fatty Acids)? I was persuaded (and excited) to make my own baby food, and I suspect that Karmel has some great tips for encouraging toddlers to widen their food choices. I didn't quite trust her nutritional advice. From what I could tell she is not a nutritionist nor did she employ one in the writing of the book. I was very surprised to see her recommend red meat as much as she did, and of course alternative lifestyles were only given cursory mentions.

Overall it was very enjoyable, and something that I will keep on hand for tips and recipe ideas. I would definitely recommend it to first-time moms, especially those who have an interest in natural foods.½

I have found few books on infant and toddler nutrition that are as helpful and practical as this one. The colorful pictures, recipes, simple ingredients, and tips combine to provide even an experienced parent with a ton of insight into feeding his or her infant or toddler.

I was particularly impressed with the fact that Ms. Karmel continually advocates for breastfeeding, even prolonged breastfeeding in conjunction with healthy solid food consumption. Her ideas are neither antiquated nor so modern as to be suspicious, and they can be adapted by anyone who has an interest in feeding his/her child nutritious and fun foods. This is no ordinary infant/toddler nutrition handbook, as evidenced by the recipe I have personally bookmarked to make for an upcoming birthday party: ice cream birthday cake featuring a raspberry filling!

This is a great resource book for issues related to feeding a little person. There are extensive sections on breastfeeding (how to's and common issues), with recipes that can be helpful for parents. The recipes are pretty easy and have straight-forward ingredients, so hopefully most parents won't have to make multiple trips to the store to make 1 dish. The sections for the feeding the child themselves were all very interesting. Each age group section was part Q & A and part recipes.
This would be a great book to give to any new parent. I wish they made it more clear that this would be helpful during the newborn months, I'm afraid some new parents might miss on those helpful sections if they buy this when they start actual food. Well laid out, easy to read and straight forward - all qualities for a great cook-book.

As a fan of Annabel Karmel's "Top 100 Baby Purees," I was excited to see what new advice and offerings she had in "First Meals and More: Your Questions Answered." Like her other publications, she divides this book into age-appropriate chapters, which is useful when progressing through the different stages of eating with your child. This book is structured as a reference book, with a question-and-answer format that provides simple and easy to understand answers to common questions about the transition from breast or bottlefeeding to solids, food allergies, picky-eater syndrome, and the like. Unlike other books on this subject, "First Meals and More" actually starts with pregnancy and breastfeeding, offering advice, tips and even recipe suggestions for expectant or new moms. The only disappointing element was that most of the book's 50 recipes are actually repeats from her earlier publications, offering few new ideas for parents who buy this book looking for inspiration. But her recipes for homemade baby food are simple, healthy and well-received, and unless you already own Karmel's collection of books (upwards of 20 at last count), the repetition likely will not be an impeding factor. This book is highly recommended for anyone who primarily has questions on starting your child on solid foods and the issues surrounding the transition; if you're more interested in just recipes, I would recommend "Top 100 Baby Purees" or "Blender Baby Food."

Let me preface my review by stating that I do not currently have children, but I am pregnant. So, I cannot comment on whether the techniques taught in this book book actually work. However, I can say that, for a first time mom, who has no idea what she is doing, this book is fantastic! It is structured in a simple "Q&A" format, which makes for a more interesting (and less overwhelming) read than just paragraph after paragraph of information. Although I read the entire book, I concentrated most on the first section, 0-6 months. In that section, a lot of questions I had about breastfeeding were answered. Because of the "Q&A" format, I can envision that, once I actually start feeding, when questions arise, I'll be able to quickly find the answer. There are also recipes sprinkled throughout the book (first, recipes for mom to eat while breastfeeding, then, recipes to make for your baby once it moves to solids). I appreciated this, as I plan to make my own baby food. Overall, I was very impressed with this book and I can see that I'll get a lot of use out of it over the next two years.

This is an excellent book for new parents. It is organized by age and offers a wealth of information about nutrition and feeding of newborns to toddlers. It also offers lots of recipes, though many of these are purees that don't require much imagination to come up with on one's own. I liked that the book had pictures to go along with the recipes and that the book covered a lot of information. The one thing that I did not like was that the book refers the reader to another page in the book quite often. I felt like I was flipping through the book rather than just sitting and having a good read. Still, I would give this book to new parents or parents of little ones.