Best of the Best from California: earnest summation

A few years ago, Isabel and I had a lot of fun cooking from Best of the Best from Alaska, which was the only Alaskan cookbook we could find at the bookstore and full of halibut recipes. It wasn't bad at all.

This cookbook, however, is terrible. I cooked from it in December and January, when I was starting my big diet, and the dishes were so mediocre it was easy to eat moderate portions, and sometimes nothing at all. The book is a compilation of recipes from California community cookbooks and spiral-bound books. Some of them are so grotesque (chicken thighs dipped in nonfat sour cream and barbecue potato chips crumbs) that you wonder if the book might be a big joke.

It's not.

I cooked 13 recipes from this book:

worth the price of the book -- 0
great -- 0
good -- 4
so-so -- 6
flat-out bad -- 3

My personal favorite recipe was the Hershey's Kiss pie, made with melted Hershey's candies and Cool Whip. It was delicious, but I can't quite give it a "great."