Book Review: Strictly Sundays

I have found there  there are generally two types of cookbooks:  the kind with elaborate recipes and fancy ingredients that make dishes the kids won't eat; and the kind with a few ingredients, usually including some processed base like canned soup, ketchup or barbecue sauce, that are easy to get on the table and kid-friendly.  This book, Strictly Sundays: Making every cook a hero on Sundays, doesn't fit in either category.   

The author calls himself  "The Blue-Collar Gourmet", and that really does characterize  his recipes. Sometimes they are long and involved, like gourmet recipes, but they also use "blue-collar" ingredients like powdered onion soup mix, condensed cream of mushroom soup, BBQ sauce, or Old Bay Seasoning.  He has two recipes for Spaghetti Sauce.  One has 24 ingredients, including three kinds of meat (pork butt bone, lamb shank and Italian sausage).  It calls for dried herbs and canned tomatoes and tomato paste, as well as canned chicken broth.  It looks like it would take about 30 minutes to prepare, three hours to cook during step one, about 10 minutes of prep for the second part, followed by another hour of cooking time.  The other recipe calls for 9 ingredients.  It calls for canned tomatoes, tomato sauce and tomato paste, and for Schilling brand Italian Seasoning.  You only cook it for an hour.

The book is printed on glossy paper and has some illustrations, but not enough to put it in the coffee table book category.  It includes recipes for appetizers, main dishes, salads, soups, side dishes and salsas, but no breads or desserts.  

I'd like to thank publicist Barbara Kindness for sending me a review copy, via Bostick.  Grade:  B.