[.ca] The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30 Day Gourmet: A Month ... (ISBN 0966446755)

Clear and easy to follow!:
I work long hours and have a long commute. I usually don't get home until 8 or 9PM, and that's just too late to go to the grocery and cook a meal from scratch! For years I've been making double recipes for weekend meals and then having the leftovers throughout the week, but in a kind of hit or miss fashion. Several nights a week, my husband and I would look at each other and say "What's for dinner?" When I discovered this book, I slapped myself on the forehead and said "Doh!" It makes perfect sense to devote a little extra time on the weekend to building up a store of meals in the freezer. Why didn't I think of this before? I liked the authors' approach to laying out the planning and preparation for the big cooking day. There is a lot of great information here on freezing and batch cooking. Great worksheets and checklists to help you get organized. However, I must say that the recipes are not to my family's taste. Maybe it's a regional thing (we live in Southern California), but these recipes seem kind of 1960s and bland to us. (Cream of chicken soup is featured in several of them. Well, my Mom used that in her casseroles, but I don't!) Maybe it's because the recipes are aimed at kids. (We have none.) We prefer recipes with more spices and variety (I cook a lot of Thai, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese dishes). However, I do not regret buying this book. All the info other than the recipes is very helpful and make this book worthwhile. I've simply adapted my own recipes to this plan. One last note--most people won't care about this, I know, but I've been in the documentation business for 30 years, so I do. The format of the book is slightly amateurish. Although easy to read, the charts look hand-drawn, and the fonts and page layout look like someone put it together in Microsoft Word. I would expect something a little more polished for my money.

The BEST of the Freezer Cookbooks:
The 30 Day Gourmet Cooking Manual is the BEST of all of the Freezer Cooking manuals!!! These ladies have REAL food for families and individuals...not what I like to call "California Food." Tasty, hearty, filling and oh so EASY!! The forms make once a month style cooking a breeze. This food is NOT leftovers, it is either not precooked before being frozen, or is not cooked all the way. Out of the 21 recipes I made for this month, only 3 were entrees I did not care for, and one of those was because I didn't use good enough wine in the sauce. Although their personal focus is on team cooking, I cook by myself for just myself and my husband and it works just fine. The recipes are scaled from four servings so all I do is package them in two-serving containers. If you want to learn more about 30 Day Gourmet be sure to check out their website at www.30daygourmet.com for more tips, recipes and stories from other REAL home cooks!!!

Great--especially for beginners to bulk cooking...:
I was glad to have this book when I first took on bulk cooking--and struggled until I actually READ those "teaching" sections. This book is as much educating on bulk cooking, freezing, planning and tracking as it is about the recipes. It is the be-all-end-all primer to bulk cooking--right down to helping you investigate freezers, maintain them and deal with them during power failures. There's a wide variety of recipes here; but their bigger value is in the way the recipes are laid out so that you know the ingredient amounts for a wide variety of serving sizes--so you can cook in the amounts you really want. In the beginning, I never dreamed of cooking for more than 1-3 meals at a time; but I'll tell you that now I usually follow the ingredient column for the 6 meal amount! So it allowed me to grow in ability. There were also some recipes for "base" ingredients--stuff you can cook now and freeze that are used as the basis for a variety of meals. Even though I wasn't thorough about reading the advice on planning and organizing (I glanced through it at first), I managed to cook in one weekend enough food for my husband and I to eat well for over a month. Now, a full weekend of cooking can last me 2-3 months (depending on how many ingredients are on sale!). Last, there is access to ADDITIONAL recipes online. An excellent buy for someone who is overwhelmed by the idea of bulk cooking, doesn't know where to start and needs ALL of the basics to ensure that time and money savings are achieved through the process!

What a lifesaver!!!:
I LOVE this book. Not only are you given recipes to get you started, it walks you through the process of adapting your own meals step by step. The planning worksheets are a real time saver, and help organize your meal planning and shopping. Lots of practical advice on cooking on the "buddy-system" too. What a treat it has been for the past few weeks not to worry about what's for dinner; it's already in my fridge thawing out and just waiting for me to heat and serve. So who cares if our Brownie meeting runs late, dinner is waiting for me (without the hassle or expense of running through a drive-thru!)

A fantastic idea:
I stumbled upon this book by accident, and I am so glad I did! I used to hate cooking, and only within the past four years since getting married have I become more interested in it. That doesn't mean I want to cook every night though. My husband and I both work full time with long commutes, and have relied on convenience foods (which are getting old) and cold cereal for dinner. I was skeptical that I could really benefit from this book since I don't have a separate freezer (just a tiny one above my fridge). But you'd be surprised how much you can get in a small freezer if you pack items flat in ziploc bags. I made 7 recipes (doubled two of them) two weekends ago and now I feel like I'm on vacation! It's been absolutely wonderful to come home and simply heat up something from the freezer. The recipes are easy to make, taste delicious (we've devoured two pans of granola bars already), and there's much more at the website. I also purchased the software (another review in and of itself), which was an amazing amount of help in simplifying the process. The great thing about this whole concept is that it can work for anyone--not just large families--and you do not have to prepare 30 days worth of meals at once. A few smaller, shorter cooking sessions are very doable. And I'll soon be trying some of my own recipies in bulk, with the knowledge Nanci shares on what foods freeze well, and how to package them. My husband has been so impressed with the great food and the prospect of saving money and eating healthier, that he's going to take me shopping for a stand-alone freezer this weekend. Hoooray!!