Off the Shelf: Cooking from the Pantry

I've had this cookbook for over 5 years and it's my most favorite! I like food to be delicious, interesting, beautiful, and easy to make... everything I've made from this book has been all of those things! Once you get some of the less common items "on your self" (like Chinese five spice or Thai fish sauce) it is easy to make everything in the book!

I love that all of the recipes in this book have pictures! I also like that Donna has the recipes categorized by main ingrediant. I love rice so I am always finding yummy new recipes in the Rice section. Within each category there is a section for fast recipes that only take minutes to make. The deserts are wonderful! I can't wait to cook my way through this book!!!!

A great find- this book offers reader's with limited time how to create great meals with a few ingredints and tasty too. Great photos with varied recipes to choose from.

Most of the recipes don't have more than 5-7 ingredients, mostly items from the pantry but there are always 2-3 fresh items that really make the difference. There are pictures for every single recipe, very useful for when you want to know what the dish should really look like. The gorgeous pictures alone are worth the price of the cookbook, wonderful to browse when you are trying to figure out what to cook. The only negative is that the recipes are not inherently low fat, but it's easy to substitute high fat cheeses etc with the low fat version. The interesting food combinations and easy easy preparations make this an awesome everyday cookbook.

This book is worthy of its predecessors. Like Donna Hay's 4 earlier books, this is a beautiful cookbook (the photography and food styling are gorgeous) filled with inventive and reliable recipes. The speciality of this book is that it provides recipes that can be made with just a few staples in the pantry. The asian chicken noodle soup is particularly wonderful.