This was ok but nothing special.as far as cookbooks go. Not a lot of variety or vegan options. Disappointed.

Thanks to Lauren Allen and publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Sorry it was late, I have been reading a lot.

Already available.

This would be a great book for a first time cook or a present to a long time cook.

I think the words make from scratch are intimidating for most. We've grown up in a fast environment of microwaved dinners and food delivery service. But thus book shows you it can be really easy. I tried a few recipes and will be picking up a hard copy. I've been cooking for 52 years and wish I'd had this decades ago.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of "Tastes Better from Scratch Cookbook" by Lauren Allen. I have a busy work and home life, and I'm usually looking for easy solutions to throw meals together. Cooking from scratch sounded very intimidating but this cookbook was a very nice surprise. The recipes are easy to follow, delicious, and super easy to make for a large family. I would definitely recommend it.

A great little cookbook full of the basics and easy to follow for someone who isn't a supercook. I made the Apple Crisp and it came out great!

I will admit that I am not the intended audience for this cookbook. I'm a pretty adventurous eater and equally adventurous in the kitchen. I am that person who will hunt down 23 ingredients to make some elaborate dinner just for my single self. Then pull out very random pantry ingredients and whip up something on the fly the next day. During COVID-19 lock-down, I was pretty much killing it, and my thighs can prove it, LOL.

So keeping my cooking lifestyle in mind, I found the recipes in the book to be pretty basic. But, again, I am not the intended audience. It is a cookbook though that I could see myself buying for a bridal shower or newish mom who is overwhelmed with finding recipes for things that taste good that her family will eat and that push her a little outside her comfort zone of assembly style casseroles and grocery market meal kits. Things made from scratch DO in fact taste better, and this cookbook takes away the anxiety of transitioning into from scratch cooking with just a few cheats/hacks (some canned ingredients for example) up one's sleeve when you just have to save time. I also liked that many of the recipes came with both slow cooker and InstantPot instructions so that the guesswork is taken out of those adaptations. I did not personally view the QR coded videos, but it is a nice touch for those learning to cook who need to see the steps as they happen.

Overall, for the intended audience, I give this cookbook a solid 4 stars. I flagged 5 recipes that were newish to me and look forward to trying out the recipes in practice. Afterall, it's the perfect season for pumpkin chocolate chip bread!

Thank you #NetGalley and Greenleaf Book Group for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

I really, really enjoyed this cookbook from Lauren Allen! Prior to previewing this title, I wasn't familiar with Ms Allen's blog--I am quite familiar with it now, after searching out even more delectable recipes after reading the Tastes Better from Scratch Cookbook. The cookbook contains a delicious variety of menu items, both sweet and savory, and is combined with easy-to-follow instructions and lovely photography and layouts. The inclusion of QR codes for recipes was brilliant! Just a wonderfully done, solid cookbook for people to enjoy.

My thanks to NetGalley and Greenleaf Book Group for the opportunity to preview this title in exchange for my honest opinion.

I really enjoyed this cookbook! The recipes are delicious and really accessible! It feels like a great mix of easy to find ingredients, homemade and store-bought ingredients that makes for recipes that can be put together easily and stress-free after a workday. The instructions are always very clear and sensible. Every recipe I've made from this book has turned out wonderfully. I love the variety of recipes this has as well, making it useful for almost any occasion.

A wonderful resource for every level of cook! Recipes look and sound delish. Additional notes help with ingredient substitutions and helpful storage information is provided. QR codes are a surprising and welcome addition. Don't know how to do something? Check out the QR link.

Thank you Lauren Allen for this delightful cooking from scratch lesson! Thank you NetGalley for the chance to review.

Lauren Allen grew up cooking and eating a variety of foods. She loved to try new dishes and the try her hand at making them. She studied journalism is college, spending time in Spain and later in Mexico. And her love of food kept growing. She got married, and her family grew bigger, with four kids. She turned her love of home cooking and turned it into a website where she shares her recipes and meal plans with her followers. And then she brought it all together into a cookbook.

Allen focuses on simple recipes. As a mother of four, she understands how families are stretched these days—stretched by tight budgets and by busy schedules. She offers tips for making things ahead and instructions if you want to freeze a dish, and also gives you substitution ideas and variations to offer more ways to use a recipe. And she even offers tips for dealing with picky eaters, like making sure they’re hungry before having them try something new, saving the best for last, and getting them involved in the cooking.

After getting home cooks up to speed on the equipment and ingredients they need, Allen jumps right into recipes for Breakfast. With classics like Belgian Waffles, Buttermilk Biscuits, and Classic French Toast, it’s hard to go wrong. There is also Healthy Granola, Overnight Oats, Easy Homemade Scones, and a Breakfast Casserole that can be put together in the evening and baked in the morning for an easy, delicious breakfast celebration.

From there, Allen goes to a chapter on Muffins and Breads. There are some healthy treats, like Healthy Applesauce Oat Muffins or Bran Muffins, Buttermilk Cornmeal, or Pumpkin Bread. And there are also ideas for baking Perfect Cinnamon Rolls, Easy Artisan Bread, and Pretzels, with ideas for dipping sauces.

Dinners includes classics like Italian Meatball Subs, Grilled Fish Tacos, Mini Meatloaves, or Slow Cooker Ribs. For more challenging flavors, there are Black Bean Burgers, Grilled Hawaiian Chicken Teriyaki Bowls, and One-Pan Jambalaya. There are even global favorites like Pad Thai and Butter Chicken.

There is a chapter on Soups, which includes classics like Beef Stew, Corn Chowder, Broccoli Cheese Soup, Chicken Noodle, of course, and a Classic Homemade Chili. And there is a chapter on Salads and Sides, like Artichoke Dip, Baked Wedge Fries, Authentic Mexican Rice, Butternut Squash Salad, Macaroni Salad, Baked Potato Salad, and Gourmet Mac and Cheese.

And for that sweet tooth, there is a chapter full of Desserts. Chocolate Brownies, Banana Bread Bars, Snickerdoodles, Apple Crisp, Peach Cobbler, Chocolate Cream Pie, Tres Leches Cake, Texas Sheet Cake, Caramel Popcorn, Fudge, and Salted Caramel Rice Krispie Treats, just to name a few of the treats that are included.

The Tastes Better from Scratch Cookbook has well over 100 recipes ideal for easy family cooking. And each recipe comes with extra tips, times for both prep and cooking, and a QR code that you can scan to take you to Allen’s video for that dish. There are lots of beautiful photos of each finished dish, and some recipes include photos of the cooking process.

The Tastes Better from Scratch Cookbook is a great starting place for someone with a young family, wanting to learn more about cooking at home, planning for meals, and getting picky eaters on board with family dinners. It’s a little basic for how I cook, but it would make a really great gift for a beginner cook. I do love how there are photos for every recipe. I think that’s important for new cooks, and having the extra information online will be a big help as well.

Egalleys for Tastes Better from Scratch Cookbook were provided by Greenleaf Book Group through NetGalley, with many thanks.

Tastes Better From Scratch Cookbook by Lauren Allen
Finally a cookbook with food my family and I will actually eat! The recipes are not complicated, and there are lots of pictures to reference. There’s also QR codes for each recipe that leads to a video for each dish. That’s unique and very useful for sure. This is a really good everyday cookbook to add to your recipe library.
Many thanks to Lauren Allen, NetGalley, Greenleaf Book Group, and Tastes Better from Scratch, LLC for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Excellent collection of recipes. I enjoyed the variety of recipes to fit every palate and skill level. I particularly enjoyed the recipes for breakfast breads and dinner dishes, and the versatility provided in the instructions to suit particular tastes. I did encounter some formatting issues with the eBook version. Some of the recipe photographs were in places that didn't correspond with the recipe they were depicting. But, overall this is an excellent collection of recipes and I would recommend it to both the seasoned cook and the beginner.

Absolutely love this cookbook. I often find that cookbooks will have obscure ingredient recipes that are completely unapproachable. What I found with this cookbook was that just about every recipe is a dish I have had before. I love that. Its familiar, its helpful, and I love that it's from scratch cooking. Sometimes when I'm cooking, I use prepackaged ingredients to put together a meal and it feels like I might as well eat a TV dinner since the ingredients are so processed anyway.

That's where the idea and concept of this book is so refreshing.

Truly an approachable cookbook. I will absolutely be buying a copy!

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Publisher Description:
This book was amazing! It was a lot for my kindle, but I liked it so much I'm getting a paper copy. This book has everyday ingredients in it, pictures galore, and theres a ton of amazing recipes. There were more that I liked than didn't. I have already made a few:)

What’s inside:

116 recipes
Images with every recipe
QR codes linking to a video of how to make the recipe
Make ahead and freezer tips for recipes.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review.

This is a great cookbook, that has recipes that are not overly complicated. A unique feature of this book is that there are QR Codes for each recipe linking it to a video for the recipe. This is a definite add to your cookbook library if you are looking for a great every day book.

Tastes better from scratch is a beautiful cookbook. I love that this cook book has pictures of every dish included. I have tried several of the recipes in this book. The cinnamon roll recipe specifically was confusing to me. I wasn’t sure how much butter to add into the rolls (there were two different amounts and the instructions didn’t specify) and I think I chose wrong. My rolls turned out really dry. I’m going back to my old recipe. I also tried the Zappa toscana recipe and it was so bland I had to pull up another recipe for this soup online and add some extra spices. The butter chicken recipe was delicious! I have used a lot of recipes from the better from scratch blog so I have tried previously some of the other recipes in this book however I haven’t recently made them. There is a good selection of recipes to try and the ingredients are easy to come by. Nothing obscure to procure. I recommend this cookbook with a caution that some of the recipes might need to be altered to your tastes.

I love to cook and have tons of cookbooks. I particularly like this one as I don’t always have as much time as I’d like to make meals from scratch. A lot of these recipes can be made in 30 minutes or made and frozen ahead of time. I particularly like the freezing instructions as some things don’t always freeze well. I also prefer cooking with fresh ingredients. There is a nice variety of recipes and has beautiful pictures. I wasn’t familiar with this author but am now following her blog for new ideas as well.

Also reviewed on B&N under 1IrishEyes430 and Kobo under IrishEyes430

I love the pictures, they help you to visualize what your food will look like! The cookbook starts with 4 of my breakfast favorites - Belgian Waffles, Buttermilk Pancakes French Toast, and Biscuits and Gravy, with clear instructions and pictures! There are even healthy choices such as Healthy Granola and Overnight Oats.
The bread recipes vary from pumpkin bread to cinnamon rolls to a healthy recipe for Skinny Banana Bread.
There are so many main meal choices - from Black Bean Burgers to Chicken Salad Croissants and even Chicken Gyros! There is even take - out food, French dip sandwiches, Pad Thai, and Grilled Fish Tacos !
You'll find recipes for artichoke dip, guacamole, peanut butter bars, white chili and a luscious German Chocolate Cake!
Enjoy fixing these homemade, easy to follow tasteful recipes!

Thank you Greenleaf Book Group and NetGalley for e-ARC of the book.

Tastes Better from Scratch is a wonderful cookbook. It is full of simple and classic recipes, understandable and incorporates many easy to access ingredients. Some recipes are accompanied with tips for freezing and substitution s, as well as QR codes for quick videos.
This cookbook is the perfect addition to keep in the kitchen for when you want a quick, delicious, and easy meal or sit down to write down your meal plan for the week.

This is a great cookbook for real people. Although a couple of recipes have more fussy ingredients than my family prefers, (they aren't very adventurous), most are fun takes on regular foods, that could liven up your weekly menu.

The recipes are written so even beginning cooks & bakers can make something tasty, and the photos are bright. (As opposed to many overly-dramatic and dark photos of recipes I have seen lately.)

I was actually stunned to see a particular family favorite; German Pancakes! These are not your round, stackable sort. It's a blended mixture poured into a baking dish (we use a clear Pyrex 9" x 13" pan), and the "single pancake" reaches up above the sides of the pan a couple of inches! (We call them Monster Pancakes.) This is then cut into pieces and served with powdered sugar or syrup.

A couple of other dishes were very similar to our own as well, which was a delightful surprise, because many cookbooks read like restaraunt food I could never afford, or science fiction.

The author, Lauren Allen, has a wonderful website with the same title, but it's do nice to have a hard-copy cookbook sometimes!

4/5 Stars

Thanks to Greenleaf Book Group and NetGalley for the temporary digital copy of this book; any review is voluntary and completely my own opinion.

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I have read a lot of cookbooks lately, and this one stuck out to me as one that had super easy yet creative recipes. I think that the author, Lauren Allen, did a great job creating a comprehensive cookbook and including recipes in this cookbook that are highly realistic. Not only are these recipes realistic, but they are easy enough for anyone to make, including those of us who find ourselves short on time but wanting to make a delicious and filling meal for ourselves and our families. This book has a ton of recipes, and I am looking forward to recreating many of them. I also really enjoyed viewing the pictures of the recipes that were included in this book. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a cookbook that is filled with simplistic, yet delicious, recipes!