Author(s): Kathleen Botta, Claire Mendonca
Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing
Publication Date: 2002-06
Pages: 374
Review: As a single working mom, this cookbook has been a lifesaver. Before I added this cookbook to my collection the meal selections at home usually ended up alternating between pizza and frozen dinners. My challenge was always the planning side - what will I make - as well as having the ingredients on hand and having something on the table within 30-45 minutes of arriving home.
By following the menus in this book, the shopping (which I also HATE) is simple, and even if a particular recipe doesn’t appeal to me or my son, it offers me the idea and I can easily substitute one of my own favorites.
The monotony of alternating between one or two “old standbys” are over, and both my son and I enjoy having home cooked, balanced meals. I agree with one other reviewer about the large numbers of recipes that call for instant rice or other processed foods. However, I recognize this as a trade-off to allow for quick preparation. I often substitute with the long cooking varieties when I have the extra time. I recognize the true value here is on the planning side - having the menus laid out along with the shopping lists is well worth making some adjustments in the recipes. I’m not one who tends to follow recipes exactly anyway — I treat them more as “inspiration and guidelines”.
Also, the seasonal changes are reasonable if not perfect — it really depends on your location on whether the specific produce will be fresh for you locally at that time, but the seasonal changes are as much about what you’ll be craving (i.e. more lighter entrees in summer with more “comfort food” in the winter meals).
One comment on the format of the book — it would be great if they tabbed the sections so that you can easily find the correct week’s menus and shopping lists. I’ve actually added tabs to mine and it makes it much more functional.I have had this book for about 3 months now, so far using the “Winter” recipes.
The concept is good: Gather a year’s worth of recipes together, split them up into seasonal sections, and create shopping lists. Give advance notice for the next day’s meals, and prepare ingredients ahead of time. For someone who has a difficult time menu planning, I thought this book would be my answer.
But the directions are not so good. Some directions will have you cook pork chops until you could resole your shoes with them. Some will tell you to bring the ingredients of a soup to a boil, but omit the part about adding water. Some will include ingredients, yet never tell you what to do with them. Some directions will tell you an important step, but only at the end of the recipe, when it’s too late. Some have incorrect cooking times, leading to undercooked/overcooked meals.
Then there’s the cream-of-something soup recipes. 43 cans for the year. 18 cans of cream-of-something for the Spring section alone! Before deciding on the week’s recipes, I scan the ingredients for C-o-?’s, and cross those recipes right off the list.
Of course taste is subjective. Maybe you would like a dish with cream-of-mushroom, a pint of sour cream, 2 cups of cheese, 1/2 cup of butter and some hash brown potatoes. It was nearly deadly for my family. Gag reflex for my 3.5 year old, and doubled-over gas-filled intestinal pain for us.
Some recipes are unnecessary for a busy family. My first go at the book was Sloppy Joes with Stovetop Baked Beans. In the interest of time and money, I skipped the ingredient list and bought a can of Sloppy Joe mix and a can of Baked Beans.
Some recipes are good. We liked “Mom’s” Meat Loaf and Mexican Lasagna for instance.
If you get this book: read, re-read, re-re-read the recipes and make sure you make notes and fix the omissions and errors before starting. Use your own common cooking sense: if the recipe calls for you to cook chicken breasts, stuffed with cheese and topped with spaghetti sauce, for 1 hour, you might want to adjust that a bit so you don’t end up with dried-out, tasteless boiled chicken with cheese melted right out of it, sitting in watery spaghetti sauce. And if you like cream-of-whatever soup, then get your casserole dish ready… you’re going to need it.I’ve used this cookbook about six weeks now, in one way or another. Some weeks I follow their plan, some I just use a couple of recipes from it. So far, the vast majority of the recipes have been hits with my family, and I am amazed at how inexpensive the meals work out to be, even following the weekly plan. I really recommend this book!I am constantly trying to decide what to make for dinner. It seeems like we always have the same things. I needed new ideas and new recipes to use. My neighbor had bought the recipe book “What’s for Dinner?” She said I could borrow it. It has a complete menu for each week completed with the recipes for each item. Each menu consists of a full course meal, (including dessert!) I used it for a week and loved it! I did not have to think about it any more, and I had all the ingredients I needed because I took the shopping list with me to the store. If you are not a creative cook, and do not have the time to plan your own meals and menus, I highly reccomend it!!I was very disappointed with this cookbook. It claims to use fresh, seasonal foods, then has you using tomatoes in spring and instant white rice (along with many other prepackaged, processed “foods”). Maybe tomatoes are a spring veggie in California (which is where the authors live), but they’re a _summer_ veggie here in Michigan! I guess if you’re so busy that you can only take 30 minutes to cook dinner and don’t mind eating less nutritive food, this might be a good cookbook for you, but if you want truly fresh, seasonal, good-tasting, REAL food recipes, buy _Simply in Season_ by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert instead.
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