A review of Annabel Karmel’s Complete Family Meal Planner

Annabel Karmel’s Complete Family Meal Planner
By Annabel Karmel
Ebury Press
ISBN 9780091932190, $35aud, July 2009, hardcover
http://www.annabelkarmel.com

Annabel Karmel is the maven of children’s meals. She’s written 15 books, all focused around feeding young families. All of the ones that I’ve read (and I’ve read most of them) have been rooted in that winning combination of sound nutritional principles combined with a fun, child friendly presentation that only comes from a deep understanding of what children will and won’t eat. Her latest book is a follow on to New Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner focusing on slightly older children this time. However, as with all of Karmel’s books, the emphasis is on ease and family friendliness, so that you are not making multiple meals, but rather, cooking one lot of food that is good for everyone in the family.

There are 150 recipes in all, broken up in to categories of breakfast, soups, snacks and lunchboxes, pasta, poultry, meat, fish, low-fat, vegetarian dishes, cakes and biscuits, and dessert. There are also chapters on organising the cupboard, fridge and freezer, and on nutrition. All of the recipes have been developed specifically for busy parents, and are therefore fast, healthy, and easy enough so that your children can participate in the preparation. Doing so will add further value to the recipes as children tend to be much more liable to eat what they cook. The recipes are also adult friendly, so you won’t be doing special meals for anyone.

Some of the recipes are quite simple, and are more about serving the food in a way that will appeal to children, such as the savoury breakfast muffins that look like faces, or creating a salad bar for your children to choose raw vegetables from. Others involve sneaking good food into your children, such as the "Dressing For Dinner", or "Chicken Balls in Sweet and Sour Sauce." Everything is nicely presented too, with large, attractive photos, and most of the meals are even good enough for a fancy dinner party, so you can ditch the fish fingers (unless they’re Karmel’s posh ones) and serve everything the same thing. I’ll drink to that.

The desserts are easy and yummy, and most are reasonably healthy too. My kids loved making the funny face fairy cakes, while I liked the raspberry ripple cheesecake that required no baking and was as easy to make as it was impressive. Cooking fancy meals for unappreciative children can begin to wear thin (and make you want to dish out any old thing), and Annabel Karmel’s latest book is a perfect antidote for that. It’s a cookbook full of fast, fun, healthy recipes that your children (and everyone else) will cheer you for making. What parent could ask for more? More about Annabel Karmel and sample recipes can be found at www.annabelkarmel.com

About the reviewer: Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of Sleep Before Evening, The Art of Assessment, Quark Soup, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Cherished Pulse and She Wore Emerald Then. She runs a monthly radio program podcast The Compulsive Reader Talks.