Product Description

This book is filled with recipes to make your own gifts. Each mix fits into a quart jar. The book even includes tags complete with recipient directions with each recipe. Just cut it out, personalize and attach to the jar. Fun to make and affordable, gifts in a jar make great gifts for neighbors, teachers and friends! A few of the recipes included are Italian Tortellini Soup, Peach Pie Coffee Cake and Chicken & Rice Casserole.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48217 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• 128 pages

Customer Reviews

Worthy idea for your cooking convenience.
I am attracted to any recipe that can be made in a slow cooker. I can't help it; it's my personal obsession with saving time and money. Now bring in the gift aspect and you see me light up - at last, a way to share with my loved ones the fabulous thing that is crock pot cookery! One wonders why nobody thought of this before.

Gifts in a Jar for the Slow Cooker is a recent addition to the series of Gifts in a Jar books. The idea is that you find a recipe that you would like to make a gift of, get a wide-mouth, quart sized canning jar and layer the ingredients in the order listed inside, without mixing them up so that the presentation is pretty. Then you seal the jar, top it with a circle of colorful fabric and tie with twine etc. Each recipe comes with six preprinted tags that you cut out of the book and tie onto your jar; the tags explain what additional ingredients are needed and cooking instructions for your recipient. There is also a larger page with the recipe and instructions printed for you, the maker. Sounds nearly foolproof, right?

Here's my view of this whole gift mix thing: you should never give a mix that you haven't tried yourself first, and you must like it very much or it isn't worth the bother to endorse by giving it to somebody else. Further, because these are meant to be a convenience and a fun thing for your recipient, the recipes should not require a long list of additional ingredients - 3, tops. I do realize that the "wet" ingredients like oils, eggs, meats etc. cannot be included in a gift jar for obvious reasons, but all the same...I was a little dismayed to realize that a few of the more tempting recipes in this book had several additional ingredients on the instruction tag. Just listen to this lineup for Peach Pie Coffee Cake: 6 T Butter, 2 eggs, 1/1/4 C sour cream, 1 tsp vanilla, ½ tsp almond extract, 1 can peach pie filling. Yikes! Sour cream...and how many of us would have almond extract or peach pie filling lying about the pantry??? This recipe would be more of a burden than a gift, IMHO. Happily, there were enough "short list" recipes to supply me with plenty of gift ideas for my busy parents who desperately need to utilize their slow cooker more often. The best ones (that my D.H. raved about, anyway!) were Tuna Noodle Casserole, Apple Brown Betty, Spanish Red Beans & Rice With Sausage and Chicken & Rice Casserole.

The bean-based recipes make a HUGE amount of food - so your recipient had better have a very large crock pot and a very large appetite. I cut these in half and put them into pint-sized jars and they still make enough to feed a large family each. The only other niggling complaint is that two recurring ingredients are difficult if not impossible to find at your average supermarket: celery flakes (that's *flakes*, not salt) and UNSEASONED dry bread cubes (you don't' want Italian seasoning in your Christmas pudding, I trust). I make my own unseasoned dry bread cubes for my home recipes, but I have no idea how they would hold up in a gift jar for long storage, so I haven't risked it.

To tell the truth, I use this as a cookbook for myself more than as an idea for gifts. It is convenient for me to have make-ahead mixes in labeled plastic containers for getting-home-too-late-to-cook occasions. Also, these do make perfect additional gifts for somebody who is getting a slow cooker for Xmas. Therefore I can recommend this cook book with some reservations and cautions.
-Andrea, aka Merribelle

Not the best in the Series
I was disappointed in this version of Gifts in a Jar. A handful of the recipes I would try myself, even fewer to give as gifts. Some recipes use the slow cooker to essentially 'bake' the dish in the slow cooker!!?? And I do not want give gifts serving 12 people for a family of 4 that may not be interested or even like these types of dishes. I feel most of the 'gifts' in this book would be better if entirely prepared, presented and shared, there will be fewer disappointments this way.

great for gifts
I really enjoyed using this book to make Holiday gifts. I am a "crafty" person, so my family & friends expect something homemade. I enjoyed the variety of recipes and loved the fact that labels with cooking directions, were included. Since I mailed some of the items, I used cello bags rather than jars, to keep down the cost and avoid breakage. I do, however, recommend double bagging for security. I have gotten rave reviews from the recipients,& have enjoyed cooking some of the recipes myself.