Taken in the Cold by Roger Stelljes Blog Tour for Booktoure

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Taken in the Cold by Roger Stelljes Synopsis: "Make sure you wrap up warm for school, honey. A blizzard is on the way." Ten-year-old Teddy rolls his eyes at his mother. But then he hears a bang... By the time police arrive, Teddy's mother is dead. His open school backpack is strewn across the hallway. And Teddy is nowhere to be found.   When gunshots ring out from an exclusive family home on the edge of Northern Pine Lake,  Agent Tori Hunter  races through the gathering snowstorm to discover that  ten-year-old Teddy Marist has disappeared . His mother and her new boyfriend are dead in the family kitchen, breakfast still cooking on the stove. And racing to track down Teddy's father,  Tori finds he is missing too.   Local police are certain this is a simple case of a jealous ex-husband turned violent over his recent divorce. But interviewing everyone she can about Teddy's father, Tori's gut has her questioning if he would really kidnap his own child?  An...
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Crock Pot Essentials by Anne Schaeffer

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Title: Crock Pot Essentials 
Author: Anne Schaeffer
Genre: Cookbook
Format: Kindle
No. of Pages: 168
Date of Publication: August 1, 2023

Description: There’s nothing better than coming home after a long day at work, and dinner is already done! Perfect for family dinners, poker nights, watch parties, and bonfire bonding, Crock Pot Essentials features 101 delicious slow cooker recipes that are easy to make, take minimal effort, and can either feed a couple or a big crowd. This collection of crock pot recipes includes ideas for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert to satisfy any appetite or occasion! From breakfast burritos and blueberry cobbler to jambalaya, beef stew, barbecued ribs, and so much more, Crock Pot Essentials has all the inspiration you need to make the most of your slow cooker.

My Thoughts: I really wanted to like this cookbook and there were certainly parts that I did. My family and I have a very busy schedule and we find it hard to get a nice healthy meal on the table before our 3 year old son needs to go to bed. I was hoping to learn how to utilize my crock pot more as I can get it going in the morning, go to work, pick-up my family, and have dinner ready when we return.

I found myself bookmarking six recipes, but I have only tried one so far, which was the Hearty Ham & Bean Soup. I admit that I did omit the ham because I didn't have any and I was really interested in the bean part of the soup. I had a dry bean soup mix, which I was wanting to use and have had a hard time finding a recipe for, so I was very excited for this one. Besides omitting the ham, I followed the recipe exactly. The end result for me was that my bean soup was more of a bean mush. The beans had become so mushy from absorbing all the liquid that it didn't resemble anything like the picture in the cookbook. My only guess is that it was cooked for too long.

The pictures in the book are one of my favorite parts. I always hate it when a cookbook does not include photos because I want to see what the food I am thinking about making is going to look like. It drives me nuts when there are no photos. The instructions are easy to follow. Each recipe tells you the approximate serving size, but it does not include any nutritional information.

Not including the nutritional information was one of the things I did not like about this book. The biggest pet peeve for me was that this book uses a major short cut and that is that it uses a lot of canned soups for the bases. This was driving me nuts because canned soups are not always the healthiest and its not that hard to create a soup base on your own that is a lot more healthier than what you would get from within a can.

Rating: 2 out of 5 because of the pictures. I wanted to like this cookbook but it is just not the right one for me and my family.

Many thanks to Fox Chapel Publishing and Netgalley for this review copy. This is my honest opinion.

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