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Review: Happy Cooking by Giada De Laurentiis

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Happy Cooking by Giada de Laurentiis

Happy Cooking by Giada De Laurentiis

I’ll go ahead and confess, right up front, that I’m a total Food Network addict. I have been since I first got hooked on the “dream come true network for foodies” many years ago, thanks to Rachael Ray, Alton Brown, Emeril, and beautiful Giada De Laurentiis.

Since she has, over the years, provided me with some of my all time favorite recipes, I forgave her for being gorgeous long ago.

Happy Cooking is the television star’s newest cookbook and, though I’ve loved each of her cookbooks, this is definitely one of her best. The recipes are super creative, beautiful, delicious, and doable. Completely doable.

Giada’s recipes are consistently flawless. She is an expert at flavor combinations and, when it comes to Italian food in particular, nobody (and I mean nobody) does it any better. The recipes in Happy Cooking really shake up traditional favorites and make cooking exciting again.

She does an outstanding job of making recipes that should be insanely difficult insanely easy. With clear, easy to follow instructions, these recipes will quickly become your favorites.

The remarkable thing is this: the recipes in Happy Cooking look like they’d cost a small fortune to make – yet they’re honestly very reasonable. What’s more, the food you’ll create looks as though you had a personal chef stashed away in the kitchen.  A chef that answers to an authentically Italian name.

Happy Cooking by Giada de Laurentiis Review

Happy Cooking: Make Every Meal Count … Without Stressing Out

Recipes In Happy Eating Include:

  • Orecchiette with Cauliflower and Bread Crumbs
  • Creamy Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna
  • Pan-Roasted Asparagus with Crispy Fried Egg
  • Banana Tea
  • Chicken Sausages and Mash
  • Pan-Seared Salmon with Year-Round Succotash
  • Smoky Candied Carrots
  • Corn Fritters with Cherry Tomato Salsita
  • Fiesta Quinoa Salad
  • Whipped Ricotta with Greens
  • The Only Vinaigrette You’ll Ever Need
  • Sauteed Shrimp Cocktail
  • Many more!

 

From Amazon: Best-selling cookbook author Giada De Laurentiis is picking up where Feel Good Food left off. Filled with even more fresh recipes and day-to-day living strategies, the Food Network superstar shares her year-round approach to living a healthy and happy lifestyle.

Giada De Laurentiis, one of the most recognizable faces on the Food Network lineup, invites readers to get to know her as never before. The celebrity chef is back with nearly 200 new recipes and helpful advice on everything from hosting a potluck or open house to what to pack along for lunch every day. Drawing on the time-saving tips and healthy eating strategies that keep her functioning at the highest possible level in her roles as working mom, restaurateur, and tv personality, she has assembled a year-round roadmap to vibrant good health and delicious eating. Readers will be inspired to try new ingredients, new wellness practices, and create a wholesome balance between peak nutrition – and the occasional decadent indulgence. Featuring her New Year’s cleanse, homemade Christmas gifts, and ideas for every holiday, special occasion, and casual weekend in between, this is Giada’s 365-approach to cooking up a happy life.

You can find Happy Cooking: Make Every Meal Count … Without Stressing Out, along with Giada’s other cookbooks, on Amazon.

Note: I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review. The opinions are entirely my own.

Happy Cooking by Giada de Laurentiis


Giada de Laurentiis Products from Target: Must Haves!

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Giada de Laurentiis 3.5-oz. Sicilian Sea Salt with Fresh Lemon

Okay. I normally don’t make broad, sweeping statements (unless it plays something like, “Drink coffee, it makes you sexier,” which doesn’t really count because that’s been proven). However, the time has come to make a doozie: If you ever see a cookbook, food item, kitchen gadget, pot, pan, dish, coffee mug, spoon, small appliance, large appliance, apron, salt shaker, or bulldog puppy (???) with the name Giada de Laurentiis on it, buy it and prepare to be amazed. The woman does not attach her name or beautiful face to anything less than a 10 on a scale of 1-10.

Apparently it’s against her code.

Good code.

The Giada de Laurentiis 3.5-oz. Sicilian Sea Salt with Fresh Lemon, pictured at the top of the post?  Ridiculously excellent.  Like all of Giada’s food products, you get so much more than you pay for or even hope for.

Product Description:
An incredibly tasty Sicilian Sea Salt with Fresh Lemon Zest. The hand-harvested, all-natural sea salt with lemon zest comes from a combination of the pure Sicilian sea water and the freshest lemons grown under the Sicilian sun. Giada’s Sicilian sea salt presents a delicate and intense aroma, with distinct hints of sweet, fresh lemons. Its fresh and delicate taste is characterized by intense notes of lemon, making this gourmet product a perfect ingredient to be coupled with light dishes, ideal for cooked or raw fish and shellfish, poultry, vegetables and desserts. Academia Barilla and Giada De Laurentiis present a piece of Italy to Italian food lovers and food connoisseurs, to taste, enjoy and share. Together, Academia Barilla and Giada De Laurentiis have launched the much anticipated range of high quality, authentic Italian gourmet products.

I regularly buy Giada’s pasta, sauces, and other food products at my local Target…. a store I have nothing but love for. Her spaghetti sauces are amazing – my favorite one is a creamy pasta sauce that boggles the brain.

A recent gift from my husband (for a birthday I acknowledged but didn’t count) is the gorgeous ceramic lasagna pan pictured above. Naturally, like a kid with a toy, I had to use it right away. I normally would have whipped up my favorite vegetarian lasagna but we’d recently had spaghetti — I’m nothing if not anal — so I made a cheesy potato au gratin. Outstanding. The pan refused to allow the potatoes or the cheese to stick, which made serving, eating, and cleaning joyful, delicious, and simple.

It’s such a gorgeous ceramic pan I kind of hated to use it. You really have to see it to appreciate it. It’s worth a special trip to Target to see Giada’s collection of pans, gadgets, and more. She even has a line of sexy aprons as well as her own coffee.

Somebody tell me why I haven’t tried that yet.

By the way, when you click through to the ceramic lasagna pan, if you scroll down you’ll see what appears to be a great recipe for Baked Gnocchi, calling for spinach, nutmeg, gnocchi, chicken broth, heavy cream… is your mouth watering yet?

Another gift the wonderful husband bought me was the Giada De Laurentiis for Target 12″ Stainless Steel Nonstick Sauté Pan (Click through this link for details as well as a recipe for Orzo with Sausage, Peppers and Tomatoes!). This gorgeous pan was initiated into the family with salmon patties and is currently simmering a little pasta sauce for my oldest daughter’s lunch.

It’s quite possibly the best pan I’ve ever owned.

Features:
Pan-Pot Material: Stainless Steel
Handle Material: Stainless Steel
Features: Riveted Handle
Care and Cleaning: Hand-wash Only

Click through any of the links (except for the Giada de Laurentiis 3.5-oz. Sicilian Sea Salt with Fresh Lemon – it has a mind of its own) to browse Target’s outstanding line of Giada de Laurentiis products.