Book Review: Mix-A-Meal Cookbook

Mixes and Recipes by Deanna Bean & Lorna Shute.  Old Fashioned Taste...New Modern Mixes.

That sounds intriguing, doesn't it?

This is a mix cookbook for mixes using food storage items.  It's exactly what I was looking for.  And it does not disappoint. 

Most of the recipes are for some form of baking, so it doesn't have all the dinner recipies that Make-A-Mix has.  But there's a mix for just about anything you'd want to bake.

I like the way the book is organized.  It has sections for Basic Mixes, Sauces and Spice Mixes, Instant Meals (so there are some dinner recipes), and Easy Fun Dessert Mixes.  Each section has several mix recipes.  Each mix recipe is followed by a mini-mix recipe (for testing) and the recipes that use that mix.  So you don't have to keep paging back and forth between mix recipe and final recipe.

Here's a list of mix recipes in the Basic Mixes section:  Biscuit Mix, Chicken baking Mix, Cornbread Mix, Homemad Bread Mix, Hot Roll Mix, Instant Potato Mix, Maple Syrup Mix, Muffin Mix, Onion Soup Mix, Pancake and Waffle Mix, Potato Coating Mix, Stuffing Mix, and Tortilla Mix. 

Although some mix recipes are followed by only 1 or 2 recipes, some have a lot of recipes.  Look what you can make from the Biscuit Mix:  drop biscuits, rolled biscuits, pot pie, pizza crust, mexican pizza, fruit breakfast pizza, crackers with several variations, cream puffs, tempura, fritters, braided dinner roll, and breakfast cake.  Whew!  And it's cheaper than buying Bisquick!

I am really looking forward to making the Hot Roll Mix.  But my dehydrated margarine won't arrive until next Wednesday, so I'll have to wait until next weekend.  I eat a lot more rolls than I do loaf bread.  But also, you can make pocket bread from this mix.  And all kinds of dinner rolls.

The book includes recipes for several types of fillings for the pocket bread.  But I think the pockets would also be good with tuna salad, chicken salad, and other things like that.  And they would be so easy to take to work:  just bring a couple of pockets, a container with your filling, and a couple lettuce leaves.

There are recipes for things other than baked goods:  Onion Soup Mix, White Sauce mix, and a few others.  Then, of course, there are recipes for using those mixes.  Several recipes use more then one mix.  And sometimes one mix is used as an ingredient in another mix.  The Italian Tomato Sauce recipe uses both the Italian Spice Mix and the Tomato Sauce Mix.  Then the Spaghetti Supper uses the Italian Tomato Sauce and the Onion Soup Mix.  And the Alfredo Delight uses the White Sauce Mix and the Onion Soup Mix.  There are several recipes for various Cream Soups, although I was disappointed that none of them used White Bean Flour.  Oh well.

This book is great for anyone who wants to use their food-storage items to make mixes to make their everyday cooking quicker and easier.