Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)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.
Click Here to see more reviews about: What's-For-Dinner Cookbook: A Year-Long Program of Balanced Dinners for Your Family
The What's-for-Dinner Cookbook is the brainchild oftwo friends who for years had asked themselves, "What are wegoing to have for dinner?” as they thought of how they would feedtheir families every evening. The result is a cookbook and kitchenplanner designed to help organize the kitchen, plan meals a week at atime, and organize shopping so that the ingredients needed for everymeal are available at the right time. Based on the four seasons ofthe year, the book provides five days of planned, well-balanceddinners for every week. The recipes are kitchen-tested familyfavorites with an emphasis on fresh seasonal foods, thus encouraginghomemakers to save significant money by purchasing ingredients whenthey are most abundant. Most of the recipes can be prepared in 30minutes or less. They are presented in such a way that leftovers, suchas chicken or roast, can be included in meals planned for later in aweek. Quick tips designed to save time and expense are alsoincluded. These address such practical matters as when to shred extracheese or chop an additional onion for use later in the week, whichcan save time in preparing meals. Extensive weekly and bulk shoppinglists are coded by day to allow for family tastes or the requirementsof special diets. The What's-for-Dinner Cookbook is perfectfor busy moms, new parents and working parents, newlyweds and thosewho have cooked for their families for years. Never worry about dinneragain. The planning is already done.COOKING; COOKBOOKS 7” X9”, 368 PAGES PAPERBACK
