Berenstain Bears Country Cookbook

The Berenstain Bears’ Country Cookbook: Cub-Friendly Cooking with an Adult by Mike Berenstain.

Most children love to be involved in the kitchen with the preparation of meals, snacks and especially deserts. This cookbook has easy, low-prep recipes that are perfect for little hands. It also has a picture of each recipe! Divided in four sections, breakfast, lunch, main dish and snacks & deserts, this bright and colorful book also has measurement conversion and a few neat features at the back. 

My preschooler and I went through it and he was very excited to start cooking! All of the recipes seem to be easy and don’t involve much preparation but they do contain pre-made/store-bought ingredients like frozen pie crust, scone mix, ready-made biscuits, tater tots and instant mashed potato flakes. I understand that the idea is to make it simple for busy parents and hungry children to get together and make fun foods but in my opinion, some of the ingredients could be substituted for fresher or baked from scratch foods. Why not make the pie crust or peel and mash the potatoes? If you are going to teach your child how to cook, you might as well take that learning opportunity and make it quality time together. Granted it isn’t always possible to do so, therefore totally understanding the ready- made biscuits J this mama-of-two is a well known crescent roll in-a-tube user! All in all, it seems to be a great beginner cookbook that I look forwards to trying out with my own little cubs!