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Cooking General

The Prairie Table

Suppers, Potlucks & Socials: Crowd-Pleasing Recipes to Bring People Together: A Cookbook

by (author) Karlynn Johnston

Publisher
Random House Canada
Initial publish date
May 2019
Category
General, Quick & Easy, Canadian
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780147531100
    Publish Date
    May 2019
    List Price
    $32.00

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Description

Celebrate prairie life with this delicious combination of more than 100 recipes from Karlynn Johnston, bestselling author of Flapper Pie and a Blue Prairie Sky. Discover new and nostalgic prairie favorites, perfect for family dinners, potluck parties, picnic lunches, and gatherings of all kinds.

Karlynn Johnston, beloved blogger behind The Kitchen Magpie, knows first-hand that meals made with love--cooked with comfort in mind, and filled with real ingredients--are greeted with the biggest smiles. In The Prairie Table, she captures the magic of families crowded around the kitchen table; of social gatherings, with picnic benches groaning under the weight of a multitude of dishes; of food eaten in wide-open spaces under sunshine-filled blue skies.

Featuring more than 100 recipes--from salads to vegetable dishes; home-baked breakfasts to easy main meals; crowd-pleasing appetizers to portable desserts; a chapter dedicated to the Ukrainian heritage of the prairies, and much more!--The Prairie Table is filled with Karlynn's approachable and tasty dishes. Paired with gorgeous photography and candid stories, every recipe in this book can easily be cut in half for a smaller family meal or doubled for a large event, and there are even quick "cheater" recipes for when you are in a hurry. You can then complement each dish with the array of cocktails and mocktails featured in the final chapter of the book, written by special guest and popular Kitchen Magpie contributor, Karlynn's husband Mike (aka Mr. Kitchen Magpie).

Whether it's Grandma Ellen's Cold Picnic Barbecue Fried Chicken, perfect for a hot summer day; Sweet and Sour Meatballs to bring to your community potluck; Mango, Avocado, and Arugula Salad that even the pickiest of eaters will love; Piña Colada Sour Cream Squares for unexpected visitors; or pitcher-friendly cocktails like Strawberry Rhubarb Gin Fizz, The Prairie Table brings quintessential prairie cooking to kitchens everywhere.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Full-time professional blogger, baker, and recipe maker KARLYNN JOHNSTON can usually be found fluffing her culinary feathers on her award-winning website, The Kitchen Magpie. When she's not there, she's busy avoiding her deadlines by sneaking away to eat at her favorite Edmonton restaurants, finding a new bourbon cocktail to drink, or playing on social media. Karlynn lives in Edmonton, Canada, with her husband and two children.

Excerpt: The Prairie Table: Suppers, Potlucks & Socials: Crowd-Pleasing Recipes to Bring People Together: A Cookbook (by (author) Karlynn Johnston)

From “Welcome to My Prairie Table!”
The recipes you will find in this book are what we eat as a family, what we feed our guests at our home, and what we take to gatherings. Whether a salad or vegetable dish, home-baked bun or easy main meal, every recipe in this book is easily cut in half for a smaller family meal or doubled for a large event—even the cocktails (though why you’d want to cut cocktails in half escapes me). I also wanted every recipe in this book to be useful week in and week out, to make your life easier.

You can make a full batch of a crowd-pleasing recipe to take to a soiree or to feed your own guests, whether a side dish or a main course. There are kid-friendly recipes for dinners that will also be perfect for potlucks. There are easy dinner recipes such as Slow- Cooker Beef Dips on page 154 that also make perfect leftovers that the entire family can eat for lunch the next day, or freeze them for a later date. My Calico Beans on page 156 might be a go-to potluck dish, but my family eats it twice a month and the kids take it in thermoses for lunches. The salads and vegetable dishes are all sides that you can make any day of the week. The dainties section is perfect for filling up your freezer, to pull out for surprise visitors (so that you have something to serve with coffee!) or the holiday season. There’s nothing like a tray of dainties to get Prairie folks at a party excited!

You’re going to see classics (such as Marion’s perogies (see page 19), which I make in triple batches so I only have to make them once every couple of months) and some fresh new favorites (like the Garlic and Brown Sugar Bacon Pineapple Bites on page 103 that will make you want to throw a tiki-themed party just so that you can serve them).

I’m also bringing my husband, Mike, a.k.a. Mr. Kitchen Magpie, into the cookbook fray. He’s in charge of cocktails in our house and, due to popular demand, he now even has his own section on the Kitchen Magpie website, where he creates cocktails for everyone to enjoy. I heard from a lot (and I mean a LOT!) of you after my first book that I needed to do more cocktails, so there’s an entire chapter of Mike’s cocktails and mocktails at the end of this book just for you.

This is us. This how we eat, this is how I cook for those I love, and, if you will indulge me, this is an entire cookbook’s worth of recipes from my table to yours. I’m so very happy to share these recipes with you.

Love,
Karlynn

Editorial Reviews

"Karlynn Johnston is truly a master class in working both sides of modern food culture."
The Edmonton Journal

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