Title:	365 Family Dinners and Devotions Cookbook: A Celebration of Food, Family, and Faith
	Author:	Kathleen Y’Barbo
	Published:	2016, Barbour Books
	No. of Pages:	384
	Cover Price:	$14.99 Paperback

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365 Family Dinners and Devotions Cookbook: A Celebration of Food, Family, and Faith includes not only a seasonal recipe for each day of the year, but also a bible verse or thought with an inspiring explanation - kind of a mini sermon - to help anyone get ready for a good, positive day.

The recipes, while not particularly fancy or gourmet, are of the “community or church cookbook” variety. Most are easy, some are a little boring, and others are just plain good comfort food. The Curried Honey Chicken was quick and easy; everyone loved it. The Sour Cream Walnut Cookies were soft and cakey, with very little flavor and weren’t sweet enough – in a word: boring. I added more sugar, then dipped them in a buttery orange glaze, and they ended up being very tasty. One of the fun recipes I tested from this book was called Wonder Fudge. I had to double the butter to get it smooth and liquid enough to incorporate the powdered sugar and Rice Crispies, but after doing so, the crunchy fudge squares were a hit with all who tasted them. The bottom line is that I don’t believe these recipes have been thoroughly tested (or tested at all), and cooks should expect that they may have to tweak them in order to turn out right. I assume that’s why there are no pictures, since nobody actually made the dishes so there were no pictures to take.

The index in this cookbook is not comprehensive, and in order to find what you want to cook, you must know the name of the recipe, since it is just a list of the recipe names in alphabetical order. It isn’t really feasible to expect people to look through a list of 365 items every time they want to find something good to cook for dinner. There are no page numbers, just days of the year, and the book is not organized into subjects.

Even though there are some inconvenient features in the cookbook, it is one that is worth adding to your collection, not only because it has 365 recipes, some of which are sure to appeal to everyone’s taste, circumstances, and what’s in the fridge, but also because everyone needs a little inspiration, and there are 365 well-written little bits of that.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying an advance review copy of this cookbook.

This book may be purchased at Amazon:
365 Family Dinners and Devotions Cookbook: A Celebration of Food, Family, and Faith