Cooking with Friends: Marie Nightingale and Canada's Celebrated Cooks

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

This is an awkward book. It’s an awkward size that’s hard to hold
and it doesn’t stay open without a fight. The arrangement of recipes
is awkward (e.g., salmon appears under “barbeque” rather than
“fish”). Even some of the directions (method) are awkward. As part
of making Chicken and Ribs, we’re told to “Run under broiler.” For
an omelette recipe, the method is clearer: “Make the omelette.”

The book consists of a mass of miscellaneous recipes with no apparent
theme or unity other than that they came from or were used by someone
Nightingale once met. Many of the recipes are accompanied by a sidebar,
including a black-and-while snapshot about the friend/chef associated
with the recipe. Ingredients are given in both imperial and metric
measures.

The book seems to have missed the editing process. For example, some
recipes give measures in cups and others in quarts, and there are
methods that call for items not included in the ingredients list.
Sometimes the number of servings is given, sometimes not. There is no
nutritional analysis.

The book’s strengths are the chatty tone of the sidebars and the very
substantial number of recipes, many of which are quite imaginative.