YUM-O! THE FAMILY COOKBOOK
BY RACHAEL RAY

Yum-o! The Family Cookbook
(Clarkson Potter) ISBN 978-0307407269 0307407268

Rachael Ray's cookbook helps families eat healthier and affordably with easy and fun recipes that include vegetables, grains and whole foods. Her family recipes solve the problem of picky eaters by encouraging kids to help parents prepare healthy meals.

Yum-o! The Family Cookbook recipes have playful names to appeal to children. Ingredients are simple and easy to find. Comments and cartoon illustrations are light and humorous.

Easy recipes for children

Kid 2 Kid submissions, made by families to Rachael Ray's website, are recipes that parents and kids can make together.

Family recipes for breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner list ingredients, instructions and serving size. Rollover supper recipes create additional meals with minor ingredient additions to the leftovers.

Help for picky eaters

The 224-page cookbook has many full page color photos that depict kids making recipes and eating the meals that they prepared. A cartoon dog adds humor and illustrates many techniques, tips and recipes.

Tips for Picky Eaters provides suggestions on tasting healthy foods, substitutes for junk food, grocery shopping, opinion gathering, role modeling and other ways to get kids to eat nutritious food.

In each family recipe, The Itty Bitties Can sidebar identifies preparation activities for kids, like shredding cheese, measuring ingredients and whisking sauce.

Examples of family recipes

A one-page sidebar describes how to build a better salad. Rachael Ray lists ingredients under the headings, Good, Better, Best and Use Sparingly.

Apple flapjacks. Asian veggie spread. Banana nut oatmeal. Apple-Jack quesadillas. Cacciatore soup with turkey sausage meatballs. Greek goulash. Tortilla and tomato toast. Pretzel-crusted chicken fingers and zucchini sticks with cheddar spicy mustard dipping sauce. Turkey sweet potato shepherd's pie and cran-applesauce sundaes. Cornflake crusted tilapia with sweet and spicy watermelon salsa.