Title:	Mama Bell's Big Family Cooking: 100+ Big-Batch Homestyle Recipes Your Family Is Gonna Love
	Author:	Heather Bell
	Published:	October 22, 2024, Adams Media
	No. of Pages:	256
	Cover Price:	$23.62 Hardcover, $14.99 Kindle

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Anyone who has a big family or needs to cook big batches for get-togethers will want to consider purchasing Mama Bell's Big Family Cooking: 100+ Big-Batch Homestyle Recipes Your Family Is Gonna Love, by Heather Bell, who, with her husband, lives on a farm with their eight adopted kids. Not only has she included down-to-earth recipes, but a story of family worthy of a good novel.

The recipes are well-written in the traditional manner with the ingredients listed first, followed by step-by-step instructions that are easy enough to follow that everyone can make the dishes successfully, whether a beginning book or an advanced cook. Most of the recipes serve 10 or more, but can be cut down by half or a third for those of us with smaller families. The recipes are for dishes that most children and adults like – certainly nothing gourmet – but good all the same. The author obviously doesn’t bake bread, and uses store bought Hawaiian rolls for her sliders, and readymade pizza dough; which are both much better made in an automatic bread machine. However there are several recipes for quick breads like biscuits and cornbreads that are made from scratch.

Although there aren’t photographs of every recipe, the photographs that are included are beautiful and professional. If there is a negative to this cookbook, it would be that more photos are needed. That shouldn’t stop anyone from purchasing this cookbook, however, because it has so many plusses.

All told, this is a fun cookbook, and one to curl up in a corner to read. The story is fascinating, and the recipes are mostly easy.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.