Homemade With Love Cookbook by Jennifer Perillo

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By Nancy Johnson Horn, Editor

Jennifer Perillo wants you to know that it’s not hard to cook from scratch. And if you want to cook, you can. As a person who didn’t really like to cook until the summer before my first child was born, I agree. I’ve been a fan and reader of Jennifer Perillo, of In Jennie’s Kitchen, for a while. Last year I met her in person at Food Network blogger event and found her so likeable in person also (don’t you love when that happens?). Recently, I attended her Homemade with Love: Simple Scratch Cooking from In Jennie’s Kitchen launch recently in Brooklyn, NY and actually got to taste Jennifer’s incredible food and yes, I was in her kitchen (and spoke to her while she was making her famous pesto from scratch)!

She made a wonderful selection of recipes from her book (we’ll review it in a separate post). You’ve got to check out her cookbook, cooking from scratch will be so much healthier for our family and not as time consuming as you would think. While everything that Jennifer served us that day was vegetarian, her book features meat recipes, as well as vegan friendly, vegetarian, egg free, dairy free, gluten free, and recipes that you can make dairy free or gluten free. As someone who’s having trouble with lactose right now, this pleased me.

You can learn how to make homemade yogurt (it looks really simple and I plan to try it), homemade nut butters, homemade ricotta, as well as Jennie’s Secret Ingredient French Onion Soup, Smoky Corn and Bean “Chili” — Jennie told us she puts the quotes because real Chili lovers don’t use beans.

Here’s Jennifer on her book.

How amazing does this look?

 

This is what I nibbled on:

On the menu for our blogger lunch was:

Meatballs with Pasta  – which was my favorite dish. I couldn’t believe how delicious this was and it was meatless – the meatballs were made with pureed lentils and ricotta. It was so delicious that I plan to make this over the weekend. My 7 year old is pretty much a vegetarian and he is going to love these.

Fennel Salad with Chickpeas and Parmesan

Pasta with Pesto – I watched Jennie make this in her KitchenAid food processor. She told me her secret ingredient is butter, and it makes it really smooth.. Think Pesto’s hard? Jennie made it so quickly!

Homemade cheese crackers — these were so amazing. Make these and you’ll never feel the same away about store bought crackers again!

The white frosted chocolate cupcakes  – looked delicious, but I didn’t indulge.

I started reading the cookbook the other day and was very impressed. Will I make my own fresh ricotta? Maybe not, but I will be making some of her other mouthwatering recipes.

Here’s Esti Berkowitz of PrimetimeParenting with Jennifer and I:

Buy Homemade with Love: Simple Scratch Cooking from In Jennie’s Kitchen. I plan on picking this up for my Mother in law for Mother’s Day (she was eying my copy!).

 Thank you to Jennifer Perillo for inviting us to wonderful, homemade lunch and gifting us with a copy of the book and a small gift from KitchenAid. As always, all opinions are my own (and it’s to go out and buy this book).