[.ca] A Dinner A Day: Complete Meals In Minutes For Every ... (ISBN 0446671452)

Its not perfect, but for what it claims, it delivers:
I've been using this cookbook for three years and I think I know the ins and outs of it. It is incredibly useful for day to day cooking and once you have a pantry stocked with various spices,oils and vinegars, it's not all that expensive. The main problem for where I live is the fish and the seafood. Im landlocked and we don't get much good seafood here. You can sub in a chicken breast, pounded flat, for a fish fillet, you can sub porkchops for lambchops, you can sub canned tuna for crab and shrimp for scallops. You'll save about 60 bucks a week. (and that's no insignificant amount.) The sides dishes, and the variety of vegetables are the main thing. You've never eaten such a variety of produce. If you've ever felt like life consisted of corn, broccoli and carrots, you'll get over it here. Flag the side dishes you like and repeat them at holidays. Your relatives will think you're the worlds' most accomplished cook.All in all, groceries, my once a week groceries which includes cleaning and laundry products, for a family of four is about 175.00. It saves a lot of thinking about things you dont want to think about. Buy a food processor, there's a lot of chopping. One IMPORTANT thing, skip the desserts, the kids will think they are nasty, if they are anything like mine. I mean, stewed fruits? Am I 80 years old? Just buy a couple of gallons of ice cream instead of the dessert menus. You'll save a lot of money for empty calories and the kids will be happy.But, if you can find any cookbook that's more helpful on the mass market for your particualar family, you'll be unbelievably lucky. You could spend a gazillion dollars on a personal nutritionist, who is gonna nail your EXACT needs (for a year). But you could also buy this book, throw out what doesn't work and keep what does. I think you'll be very pleased.

This gets an A-:
There's a lot that's great about this cookbook for the hassled and harried family cook. It answers the daily question of what to make for dinner that's nutritious, tasty and doesn't take too long to make. My picky eaters actually like most of what comes from this book. The whole dinner is layed out on two facing pages so you can just prop it up in a book holder and go to it. And, I've been thrilled with some of the new to me ingredient combinations that turn out delicious. On the other hand, this is not a book for new cooks. It takes a bit of cooking and shopping experience to realize that a can of chicken broth and other ingredients will not fit in a small frying pan, or that a package of yellow rice is a quite adequate and much cheaper substitute for rice made with actual saffron. And, it takes a very large and sophisticated supermarket to find many of the ingredients, especially out of season. So, there are many "corrections" and clarifications pencil marked in my copy. But, on balance, this collection will often be a godsend for the average family cook.

Organized Dinners for Family of 6:
I bought this book, hoping it would help me with dinner planning. I have 3 children under 8 years old, and my mother lives with us. I was having a heck-of-a-time figuring out what to cook to make everybody happy, what to buy at the grocery store, ending up eating out way too much. Now I shop on Sunday afternoons, with the handy-dandy shopping list. Each day I look at the day's menu, seeing what I might have to prepare beforehand. Sometimes, you may have a crockpot meal so you need to start that in the morning. Otherwise, around 4 or 5, I start preparing the meal. The recipes are all on two facing pages, the order in which to prepare the recipes is also included, which really helps me with timing. We are eating such a variety of foods now, and a lot more veggies and fruits, which everybody needs! Not everybody in my family likes everything, but I figure as the kids get older, they will start trying more stuff. I didn't like to use any convenience foods before, but I trade off the cost/health factor because we aren't eating out as much. There is sometimes quite a bit of chopping. The whole meal is supposed to take under an hour to prepare, but I think if you have a lot of chopping, it might take longer. That is my only criticism of this otherwise wonderful cookbook. We have used it for 3 months now. We cook our old standby's on the weekend and eat out once a week now. I have served several meals to company and have gotten rave reviews! I should also mention I tried once-a-month cooking in several forms and that did not work at all. We needed more variety, more fresh things, better-rounded meals. This book solved all of my dinner problems! Now if it could just do laundry, my life would be perfect!

Menu planning made easy:
Sometimes the hardest part about cooking day after day is coming up with the menus. This has a year's worth of weekday menus and recipes, organized seasonally. (Also bound nicely! Why don't more publishers think about how a cookbook is used?) Complete with a shopping list for each week and balanced meals. My only complaint is it's hard to find a recipe you want to repeat because of the "cute" names. A minor flaw though.

Great concept, poor execution:
The organization of this book is top-notch. A complete meal on each spread, the shopping list up front, the countdown of preparation steps... perfect. Now, if the recipes were good, it would be my one and only cookbook. I've made about 20 of the meals. Every one left something to be desired, and some were just plain bad. The authors use the phrase "season to taste" a lot, and they mean it. We're not just talking salt and pepper. I usually use more of the herbs and spices they do call for and add others of my own. I've also encountered obvious mistakes in several of the recipes. In their quest for a year's worth of different recipes, sometimes they get a little too wacky with the ingredient combos, too.