Book Nook - Weeknight Wonders

 Ashley Craft’s Weeknight Wonders brings the family together to cook fun themed dishes celebrating holidays and cultures from around the world.

From the best-selling author of The Unofficial Disney Parks cookbook series comes a cookbook that gathers the family in the kitchen and around the dinner table. Weeknight Wonders shares 52 weeks of holiday- and culture-themed dinners, with 3 family-friendly recipes per theme—for a total of 156 recipes! 

I had a chance to review this cookbook, which includes lots of opportunities to get kids involved in meal prep. As a homeschooling family, this would have been amazing when my kids were younger, to be able to find themed menus that are based on holidays or locations. Tips are included in age-appropriate bands: Little Helping Hands (3+), Big Kids in the Kitchen (7+), Tweens on the Scene (11+), and Budding Sous-Chefs (17+) (although, as my daughter pointed out, some of the tips assume no prior cooking experience, as she was doing a lot of the 17+ when she was a much younger teen. Otherwise, we loved the themed recipes, and they were all family-friendly while still encouraging new techniques and flavors!

 

 About the Author:

Ashley Craft began writing cookbooks in 2020 and is the best-selling author of the Disney and Universal Parks cookbooks. Her books have sold over 700,000 copies and reached the top 10 on bestsellers of USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. Her first book, The Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook, was ranked fifth in all books on Amazon. Besides Ashley’s passion for Disney and Universal theme parks, she also loves cooking at home with her kids. Currently ages 11, 9, and 6, her kids are constantly clamoring to be helpers with whatever meal is in production. In 2019, she began The Cool Kids Cooking Club online to have a fun way to include her kids in the meal preparation process and start an online community of kids and their parents making the same meals at the same time. It was a success for everyone who participated, and she was able to see her children eating better and trying new foods for the first time.