The Family Dinner Fix: Cooking for the Rushed

This book has helped me make dinner almost every night for over two months. Considering that I used to avoid cooking whenever possible, this is a great achievement. Richard makes dinner so easy, it is almost like working on automatic pilot. While I have cooked before, I always avoided daily dinners as too intimidating. I felt like I had inadequate time and skills to put a healthy meal on the table in under an hour. This book has banished this fear--I feel empowered. I had so much extra time, I even started setting the table nicely and using real napkins (not a requirement). It is a pleasure to actually eat at the table, like civilized people. Since my husband and I both work, although we have no children, we had devolved into eating on the sofa in front of the TV. We both tried to avoid cooking whenever possible. Richard makes cooking dinner easy, by walking her readers through the steps necessary to get a balanced meal on the table. Most of her recipes are done within 30 minutes. They also taste great and have far more sophistication than your typical "Woman's Day" recipe. She uses Asian, Indian, African, and Italian flavors to make her food interesting. At the same time, she has analyzed each dinner for its healthiness and nutritional value. So the food is tasty and good for you. To make dinner really easy, she even gives you grocery lists to follow for each week's worth of recipes. I like to pick and choose throughout the book, so I don't use the lists. But the time-challenged may find this a helpful addition. This book is well worth the price and should be far more widely available.

This book was great for those of us who grew up with a mother who didn't teach us how to run a household. The recipes are great and easy to follow, and she even tells when to start certain things when you're cooking more than one dish at a time. :) Extremely helpful! She's also honest (almost painfully so!). Yes, parents create their picky eaters, and yes, couch potatoes need to get up and move. ;) This is a wonderful way to get ourselves into the habit of eating home-cooked meals as a family.

I am in love. I own a lot of cookbooks and am a recipe hound, but this cookbook is amazing. I'm so glad I found it! Here are my favorite things about it: *Although it's a cookbook, the author teaches you how to pull meal ideas from your family, develop corresponding master ingredient and shopping lists, and create a family meal and shopping book. *There are 10 weeks' worth of meals (not recipes - entire meals) *Each week of meals includes a shopping list, which can also be downloaded and printed from the author's website *Each meal (not each dish) has no more than 600 calories total, and most are in the 400-500 calorie range. No meal (again, complete meal, not dish) has more than 29 grams of fat, but only 4 of the meals are even in the 20-something range. *Meat is usually a component of the main dish, rather than *the* main dish *Every meal contains fruits and/or veggies, many with interesting (but low fat/calorie) sauces or accompaniments *There are MANY ethnic dishes - lots of Indian, Thai, Mexican, Mediterranean, African, Vietnamese, etc., but they're all quite easy and with only a few exceptions have ingredients that come from a standard grocery store *Many meals include optional steps that can be done the night before, requiring no more than 10 minutes *Each meal shows approximate prep time and time-to-finish *Great color photos of every meal Other nice features are that it lists all ingredients in standard and metric, and includes Canadian, as well as US, food exchange info. The recipes were developed and tested over the course of two years as the author delivered the meals in the form of "kits" to local businesses to get feedback. She kept only the best of the best, and then had her family (7 kids!) rate each. The ratings are included for each meal. The author also provides suggestions for vegetarian versions of most of the meals, and she gives little notes about each at the beginning of each week's section. There is a nice balance of food preparation types (stove top, oven, crock pot) with a few grilled options thrown in. Our favorites so far are the ginger beef and egg noodles, and tandoori chicken - yum!

I checked this book from the library and plan to purchase it. I like that there were information on time management to get dinner ready within 1 hour after you pass through your front door. I also enjoy the 2 pages on why 'picky eaters' are created at the home (I have a picky eater)! The photos of the food are not touched up and this it so true. The picture of the roasted ginger ale chicken did not look appetizing at all. The recipes I've tried were, spicy meatballs, Nigerian peanut sauce (goes with sautéed fish but I think it'll go well will chicken, too), chicken & asparagus roll, Greek salad, chicken & cream sauce over spaghetti and ravioli with salsa, honey & ? (I can't remember the name of the dish). Everything was eaten and leftovers were packed for lunch without complaints. The Chicken & cream sauce with pasta looked terrible and I thought it tasted OK, but the picky eaters ate it, which was a surprised. I wouldn't hesitate to purchase other books by this author.

This is the fourth book in the "Cooking for the Rushed" series by Sandi Richard and I think the best. She is the expert on meal planning. She mentions that the most stressful part of the day is dinner, and I can believe that because so many of us don't start thinking about what's for dinner until 5 minutes till six. But she has developed a system to change that. The book has 10 weeks of meal plans, each divided into colors. The red and yellow meals are dinners that can be prepared in under 30 minutes. The green and blue meals are dinners that can be prepared in under 60 minutes. The average family spends 38 minutes preparing dinner each night. But at a glance you could easily see which meals you could have enough time to prepare and get out of the house in time. This cookbook has some very nice pictures (all recipes had a full color picture, what a treat!). There are vegetarian substitution suggestions. The pages are glossy so splatters would clean up somewhat easily. She also gives suggestions on which meals are "having company" type meals, crockpot meals, there are calorie and nutritional information provided, there's an equipment list so you'll know all the pots and pans you need, and there are also food exchanges. All is great information that many many cookbooks don't provide. Her recipe for Mexican Hamburgers calls for 90% lean ground beef but you could easily substitute turkey or tofu. It was delish; I loved the avocado salsa. There are also make ahead (freezer) suggestions for this recipe for those who like to do weekend cooking. Most of the recipes call for a full meal suggestion. The red snapper with pineapple salsa, pecan wild rice and asparagus is a complete meal. And it's all ready in under 30 minutes. All of the recipes use fresh ingredients. I didn't see any packaged foods (bottled BBQ sauce maybe) so her recipes by naturally being healthier and less fat will most certainly cause weight loss. They are not specifically low-fat but that is the usual outcome when you stop eating fast-food and start cooking with fresh, natural ingredients. There were no unusual combinations, I think most people would have kids who'd very easily try these meals. We had the crispy chicken and the kids just raved. The secret ingredient was crushed crispy rice cereal. The serving suggestions were baby potatoes seasoned with garlic herb seasoning and a side salad. All very doable in the evening. It cooked in the oven so we could do homework in the meantime. Her main suggestion is to get all your equipment out as soon as you get home, start the water boiling, etc before changing clothes. I hadn't thought of this but I can see where this would be a big motivator to continue cooking once you changed. I've found myself returning from the bedroom and just sighing because I now had to drag out pots and pans and start cooking. While not a big deal in itself, it's easier to jump in the car and go to a restaurant especially when the kids