The Frantic Woman's Guide to Feeding Family and Friends: Shopping Lists, Recipes, and Tips for Every Dinner of the Year

I love this book. The ingredients in all of the recipes are family-oriented and I'm able to buy them at my local supermarket. Best of all, the meals are easy on the budget. This book offers a cooking system to help you plan your family meals or you can pull out recipes that you want to make when you want to make them. There's recipes for Thanksgiving as well as what to do with the leftovers, which will save us money during a very expensive time of the year. The other thing that I love about this book is the author's personality comes through like she was sitting across the table from you. And there are a ton of shortcuts to make your time in the kitchen more efficient and some really fun ideas to do with the family. You can tell this author has a family and knows what it's like to be a busy mom.

I've always been mystified by my friends who feed their kids healthy, home-cooked meals and manage to make it look easy -- and fun. I always wondered how they did it. The Frantic Woman's Guide takes the mystery (and the pain) out of menu planning, shopping for ingredients, and creating kid-friendly recipes. This book has been a big boost to my kitchen-related self esteem. My family is eating better because of it.

I've never been comfortable in the kitchen. I'm not good at timing meals or coordinating them. But even I can successfully navigate this down-to-earth, realistic guide. Mary Jo Rulnick has organized the recipes into easily-workable parts: seasonal fare, weekly and daily specials, side dishes and most important how to food shop and when. She takes two week chunks of time and breaks them down--reuses and recycles the staples to come up with meals that are different, nutritious and above all, easy. (My personal favoriates are the "Slow Cook Nights" and the "No Cook Nights.") Next time you're in the bookstore, take a minute and flip through the pages. You'll be hooked immediately by the easy-to-read, logical progression of seasons, ingredients and recipes. If you are what you eat, you'll be a far, far better--and healthier person, by eating what Ms. Rulnick sets forth in this book.

Daddy gave me the money to buy this book for my mum as a present. My mum is a nurse and works long hours. Mummy and daddy are divorce. We made the chocolate cookies. I ate a lot of them. They were good. they were the easiet cookies mummy made.

The last thing I needed was another cookbook to take up shelf space, but I needn't have worried. This one hasn't been "put away" since I bought it. That's because there are no long lists of exotic ingredients. No elaborate preparations. Just simple, quick and easy kid-friendly dishes that can be prepared either in advance or on a tight schedule. Some of the recipes have already become favorites, already requested again by my family. Time-saving shopping lists and useful tips also come in handy. The author's informal, friendly style evokes the feeling of a girlfriend sharing recipes and tips over coffee at the kitchen table. FWGFFF is a winner for frantic moms on the go and the frantic families who love them.