The Lazy Days of Summer Cookbook: A Celebration of Summer's Bounty - Hardcover

With another whimsical collection of poetry, prose and food, "Pioneer Lady" Hopping ( The Country Mother's Cookbook ) again evokes a simple era when meals, family and farm life represent the American ideal--at least, in retrospect. While "fishing holes and picnic spots" and "watermelons lying thick in the patch just waiting to be thumped" are this volume's backdrop, Hopping's new collection strongly resembles her previous writings. From Effie's strawberry mousse29 and sweet-cherry crunch43 to sour-cream red June apple pie with butter-cinnamon topping50 , the recipes are simple and the dishes themselves very good. Yet the flavor of many depends mightily on the kind of just-picked-from-the-patch freshness nearly impossible to duplicate in the supermarket produce section. Still, the charm of the book hinges largely upon the richness of Hopping's words and her prolific, romantic recollections of the mothers who fortified their families--without guilt or trepidation--with endless batches of cookies, tea cakes, fruit pies and other sweets, the recipes for which are the fabric of her food writings.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

For fans of the ``Pioneer Lady,'' another nostalgic collection (after The Country Mother's Cookbook, 1991) of country-style recipes (heavy in the sweets department), sentimental verse (by James Whitcomb Riley and the like), memories of simple pleasures and special celebrations from a Thirties childhood (with family anecdotes from further back), and old illustrations to match. The recipes are for genuine old favorites or worthy family favorites; the rest is shameless mush--but the combination seems to have worked so far, and the summer setting here--with its ice-cream socials and gazebo tea and Fourth-of-July picnic--is a natural one for Hopping's traffic in fond recollections. (Fifty halftones, fifty line drawings--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.