Off the Bookshelves: Make the Bread, Buy the Butter

I have so much to write about and no time to do it right now! For the moment, I'd like to share with you a wonderful book my mother got me over the holidays. It's called "Make the Bread, Buy the Butter" by Jennifer Reese. This book is SO up my alley. Here is a mom, just like me (and many of you I dare say), struggling with food choices. We want to save money, but we want to provide the healthiest options for our families. For me, I also struggle with questions of organic or not, local or not, do I make it or buy it ready made, and do I really have the time to do all of that? Well, Jennifer has done all of the experimenting for us and has come up with an opinion on each item about whether it's really worth your time or if you should just buy it. She is very funny as well, so even if you never try any of the recipes, it's a good read.

Here's an exempt from her Introduction:

   "Until recently, I never considered making my own peanut butter. Skippy was good enough for me."
   "Until recently, I never considered buying a frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I hadn't even known such a thing existed. I first read about Smucker's popular frozen peanut butter sandwich - the Uncrustable - in a New York Times Magazine article by (of course) Michael Pollan. He wrote, "People think nothing of buying frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their children's lunch boxes." I thought: They don't? What people? What frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? What's next, frozen buttered toast?
   I felt briefly smug in the certainty that I was not so lazy or compromised that I would ever buy mass-produced peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Then I thought, people probably once said that about peanut butter. And bread. And jelly..."

She goes on about this a bit, including a test and her daughter's reactions, but you get the idea. I'm pretty sure that acorn bread does not go under the heading of make-it, but I'm very interested in how to make all of the other things she's tried (cream cheese, bagels, etc.) that I haven't tried yet. If this is your kind of thing, check it out!