This totally wise book tells you about everything from gearing up a kitchen to making great food like Renee's Chili Rellenos Casserole and perfect rice. Check out yummy vegetarian and chicken menus and get friendly with vegetables. Master how to fry bananas!

Chew has four different menu plans with everything laid out -- meals, snacks and desserts for every day and a shopping list for the entire week. Chew's a good thing for the body, and it's easy on the mind. Excellent for people who may be short on experience and cash.

120 pp, reproducible shopping lists

Now included in the Food Rules curriculum!

Make-believe you were hurled into space and landed on a strange whirling planet with lots of bizarre food and interesting distractions... and you had to figure out how to feed yourself. Sound like a teenager on planet Earth? Here's one book any teen learning to live on his or her own will want to have. But don't worry -- it assumes no previous knowledge of alien customs or habitats.

Author Diane Cissel, true kitchen guru, mother, artist and long-time staffer at Northwest Media, puts together a fun book that includes everything from what you need to know about a kitchen to scads of lip-smacking recipes, great illustrations, and... oh yeah, a plan, too.

First you get a quick tour of what you're gonna need to make a kitchen a happening place ' appliances, utensils, pots and pans, and stuff. Then comes a plan for four weeks of fabulous feeds. Each week has a menu with a different theme (Eat Meat, 12th Street, Vegetarian, and Southwestern Style), suggested meals for every day (breakfast, lunch, dinner... and snacks, too!), and a shopping list for each week.

Check out the next section on cooking basics that demonstrates even the simple stuff like how to cook noodles and chop vegetables. There's a handy glossary, so you won't miss a beat when you follow the recipes... which brings us to the next section.

The meat of the book (or the artichoke heart, if you will) contains all the recipes organized into main meat and vegetarian dishes, small meals and side dishes, and desserts. The recipes range from the familiar to the exotic, and they're all easy to read and follow. Some of the recipes were snatched from Getting Ready, Northwest Media's life skills magazine. Here are some notables: Renee's Chili Rellenos Casserole, Baked Noodles Ricotta, Bull's Eye Egg, Mojo Spuds, Potato Pancakes, and Choco-Peanut Butter Candy. There's also a brief section explaining the Food Pyramid ' no worthwhile kitchen companion would be without one.

But don't take just my word for it. Listen to the guys who tried it out. All the recipes were tested by some of Northwest Media's own artists and illustrators who started out on their own not so long ago. You'll see what they have to say about their experiences as they followed the shopping guides and recipes throughout the book.

So go ahead and Chew With Your Mouth Full after all. You'll love every bite.

--Caesar Pacifici, Ph.D

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