Review: Ultimate Dining Hall Hacks Create Extraordinary Dishes from the Ordinary Ingredients in Your College Meal Plan by Priya Krishna

SUMMARY FROM NETGALLEY.COM:

Transform your dining hall meals into gourmet feasts! Ultimate Dining Hall Hacks offers 75 amazing and creative recipe ideas that use items readily available in your college dining hall. Any night of the week, you can dine on tzatziki chicken salad, quesadillas, sloppy joes, lemon-pepper pasta, fried rice, scalloped tomatoes, chicken and waffles, Asian nachos, or bruschetta. You'll also discover how to create mouthwatering custom desserts, from peach cobbler and chocolate bread pudding to peanut butter mousse and sweet potato pie. And don't skip breakfast, when you can savor chilaquiles, avocado toast, eggs carbonara, or mango parfait. Make the most of your college meal plan with Ultimate Dining Hall Hacks!

MY TAKE:
I'm more of a baker than a cook, so any book that is easy enough for me to cook from is always welcome.

In Ultimate Dining Hall Hacks Create Extraordinary Dishes from the Ordinary Ingredients in Your College Meal Plan, readers can choose from a number of recipes that can transform their usual food choices to something different and possibly more palatable.

There are plenty of recipes to choose from, but since I'm not too fond of yogurt and granola, it narrowed my choices down a little bit. I did find a few recipes I liked and might try, specifically the Spanish rice and the toasted honey and cheese roll. I was intrigued by the olive oil chocolate sundae, which sounds gross but also fun to try.

I liked the book's colorful layout and graphics. My favorite parts of the book, however, where the charts. One of these charts showed you what ingredients to add to a basic burger to get another burger. Another chart showed what tea to add to hot chocolate to create a new variety of hot chocolate There's also a chart that arranges the desserts in the book based on how savory or sweet they are.

The only thing I wasn't too sure of with this book is, since I'm used to precise measurements in baking, I'm a little thrown by the fact that there's no measurements given. The purpose of that is so readers can experiment, so if you're a fan of experimenting with taste, this should be for you.

Thanks to NetGalley and Storey Publishing, LLC for the e-ARC. Publication date of Ultimate Dining Hall Hacks Create Extraordinary Dishes from the Ordinary Ingredients in Your College Meal Plan is on May 14, 2014.

THE GOOD:

1. The recipes are easy and look delicious.
2. The charts make you want to start experimenting with food right away.
3. The book is neatly organized. 

THE BAD:

1. No measurements are given. 

FAVORITE QUOTE/S:

I tried it anyway and discovered that the ice cream totally transforms the olive oil, giving it this amazing sweetness. 

READ IT IF:

1. You're bored with your usual dining options.
2. You like experimenting with food.
3. You are looking for dishes you can cook quickly. 

RATING:


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