Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Slow Cooker

This cook book is great. The recipes are quick and they taste great. I just spent a whole week cooking her recipes and loved every minute. These recipes get you out of the kitchen fast. I am also giving these recipes to my daughter who is getting married in a few weeks. They are easy for working moms,by the time you get home your dinner is ready for you.

I bought this cookbook because I had to have dinner ready when the Dad and I got home from work and we were hungry. I've tried several of the recipes and so far I haven't found one that we didn't like. There is minimal prep and it's easy with prepackaged items. I get things together the evening before, the dry items all go in one bowl and meats and soups in another, that way at 4 in the morning I just put it all from the fridge to the slow cooker and leave it. This is the best slow cooker cookbook I've found.

I am a busy, working mother without extra time to experiment in the kitchen. Glancing through this cookbook for the first time, I found ideas I've been looking for to serve low-stress, healthy meals to my family. Just knowing what foods are available and work well in a slow cooker is worth the price of the book. I will use improvisation and adaptation with these recipes to fit our personal needs, but this is a cookbook I can actually use for cooking, not just for decorating a shelf. Very family-friendly.

I Love this book. Love it with a capital 'L'!! It's got a great sampling of recipes and ingredients. I'm a big fan of the 5 ingredients chapter. It makes it easy where I'm a fresh out of college student so I don't have to buy all kinds of stuff for one meal. I was also amazed by the desserts you can make in the crock pot (Hot Cocoa Cake looks sinfully delicious--mmmmm!) Sandra Lee also put in some helpful hints and tips about using a crock pot that you may not know if you're a first time user or haven't used one in a long time. She addresses issues that affect both the new digital crockpots and the ones that just have a knob for off, low and high settings. I was impressed with the section that also doubles as a casserole section. I never thought about using the stoneware (if you have a removable stoneware of your crock) to double as a casserole dish....so many new ideas! One thing I recommend (and I saw this on her show) is to spray the inside of your crockpot with non stick cooking spray every time you use it and it'll never be a nightmare to clean again! It's worked every time for me.

I will admit to avoiding these books like the plague for a long time. I wouldn't even flip through them to look at the pictures until my mom finally talked me into it. I love the photos. That right there will sell me on any cookbook, but I also like the lay out. I wish Rachael Ray would do the same thing. I think I'd like her books a lot more if they had photos like these do. Anyway, I ended up buying the slow cooker, the 20 minute meals and the grilling book. I took them home and spent a lot of time looking at the photos and reading each recipe and realized these are my new favorite cookbooks. I do cheat, I cut up my own onions, I make my own potatoes and sweet potatoes instead of using canned and pre-packaged ones, I grate my own cheese, and I try to use fresh ingredients over the pre-packaged, which I know defeats the purpose of the cookbook, but the recipes are right there with my own taste buds that its worth the extra time to make as many of the ingredients I can from scratch. I ended up buying all of the books and will continue collecting these as long as she prints them, and as long as they stay the same with the color photos and nice lay outs. I love the sweet potato sheppards pie. That has to be my favorite so far, though I have enjoyed everything I have made. I wish I hadn't been so stubborn for so long and found these books sooner. They are great, and remember, just because she says to buy pre-made mashed potatoes doesn't mean we can't make our own without all the added preservatives and junk, or that we can't cut op our own onions, etc. The options are there to help us save time, but if we have time, we can use fresh ingredients in place of pre-packaged.