Rating: 
Summary: Makes life fun!!!
Review: Thanks for having such great shows, We feel like were traveling alone with you. and we used the sugestions for San Diego, Loved Point Loma Seafood. Look forward to other great destinations. Keep up the great work. Waiting for your 1st book to arrive. ...
Rating: 
Summary: New show, old book
Review: The path to 'Celebrity Chef' is well traveled. Open a restaurant with your name, start a TV show (with your name) then write a book with a tie in to the show. If you think the book is a result of Rachael's application of this success formula, you'd be wrong. Based on the publishing information the book was originally published in 1998. Rachael's Food Network show of the same name isn't more than a year old which makes one wonder: what's going on here?Rachael's original show "30 Minute Meals" was a regional production in New York. This fact helps explain who Dan Dinicola is and why he wrote an introduction. He was part of the orginal show, not the Food Network incarnation. This leaves me with the feeling that either Rachael (or the publisher) cranked out another printing to capitalize on her recent Food Network success. Are business practices important if the recipes are good? Probably not and I didn't mark the book down because of it. I would say the book is "solid" and delivers what most people expect: good tasting recipes that can be made in 30 minutes. The recipes are easy to make so you don't need to be a culinary master to have them turn out perfectly. The ingredients used are also common enough to be found in most supermarkets. One thing I liked was that many recipes measure in "handfulls" and "glugs" which helps a person trust their own inner chef and grow beyond the rigidity of a recipe. So why only four stars then? Well, I took one off because the book lacked color pictures of the food. I'm a fan of food pictures for inspiration. I also would have taken one star off because there is a lot of overlap between the book and the show (especially since the show now appears daily instead of weekly) but I didn't think it much of an issue because the current price point of the book is such that it keeps value even if kept as a paper reference to the show's recipes. Just remember that much of what you pay for in this book you've already seen on TV.
Rating: 
Summary: There are better books to be had
Review: This book was ok, but it seemed a little cheaply made. There are no pictures of anything. I am a beginner with the art of cooking and this book did very little to help me out.
Rating:
Summary: Yummy and healthy
Review: This is a great book that contains wonderful ideals for quick, easy, healthy meals. Although the recipes have consistently taken me more than 30-minutes to prepare, I have never been disappointed with one yet. I admittedly don't like to cook, and find it easy to avoid cooking altogether by eating unhealthy fast-food, but this book has definitely helped me avoid the temptations of easy, low-prep., unhealthy eating that has become the staple of my diet. This book will definitely make it easier to make healthy eating more consistent, but I'm convinced that the only way to really stick to any diet is to make it part of your routine by making it a habit. A friend of mine who is a clinical dietitian gave me an amazing book entitled The Power of Habit. It explains how our eating (when we eat, what we eat, and how much we eat) is all habit. It teaches you how to change your eating habits to make healthy eating a permanent, automatic part of your lifestyle. 30-Minute Meals gives you great, easy, low-hassle recipes, and The Power of Habit teaches you how to stick to them. I highly recommend both books.
Rating:
Summary: Great for people who don't cook often
Review: This is one of the best cookbooks for people who don't cook often and who have little experience cooking! I always watch the show 30-Minute Meals, and I liked the recipes that were on the show, I just wondered if they were actually as easy to prepare as they are on the show. Once I bought the cookbook, though, my fears were laid to rest! This book is a gem.
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