Rating: 
Summary: The BEST for freezer cooking!
Review: I have been using my 30 Day Gourmet manual for 3 1/2 years now and it is by far the best of it's type!!! I started out with Once A Month Cooking, and knew there had to be a better system without all those casseroles!! A friend introduced me to 30DG and I knew from my past experience that this was THE book! And it is! The included worksheets alone are worth more than the price of the book! The recipes are great... my family of 5 likes most everything I've tried. The recipe variety is wonderful... breakfast, sandwiches, appetizers, desserts, snacks, main dishes, salads... it's all included! When I take a 30DG recipe to a pot-luck, or serve it to company, I always get requests to share the recipe! I have been able to easily adapt my personal recipes to the 30DG system too. The website at 30daygourmet.com is great too! There are additional recipes you can get there, as well as support and info from the message boards. And more successful recipes from cooks like me who use the system. The greatest thing about the 30DG system is the flexability! There isn't a set menu that you have to make each time you cook. You choose the recipes you want to make, based on your family's likes and dislikes. You can cook as few or as many meals as you choose. If your grocery is having a sale on chicken, stock up and have a chicken cooking day. Do the same with pork or ground beef. You can cook with a partner or by yourself. You can use the system if you only have the freezer above your fridge. We moved 400+ miles last summer, and spent 40 days in an apartment while our house was being completed. My 30DG manual was the only 'cook book' that went in my car with me... it didn't get sent in the moving van with the rest of my kitchen! I wasn't taking a chance of something happening to it! If you only buy 1 freezer cooking book, this is the one to spend your money on!
Rating:
Summary: Dinner made simple!
Review: I love this book! I also love to cook, but not at 4:30 with twins and a puppy underfoot. Cooking ahead of time and freezing dinners makes so much sense! I love the authors' style of presenting the information, it makes the whole process of cooking for 30 days seem doable. The recipes are clear and delicious. I have recommended this book to all of my friends and have even given some as gifts. Other freezer cooking books have recipes that are all alike, like baked manicotti and pizza, etc., or too elaborate for those of us with kids and a picky husband. A great book for moms, working outside of the home or not, who want to make their lives easier, and dinnertime more delicious!
Rating:
Summary: This is the BEST monthly cookbook I have found!
Review: I absolutely love this book! Every recipe I have tried is delicious. Tara and Nanci did a fabulous job! All the recipes are "normal", things that my family will eat. The recipes were easy to follow, and I love the way they have it laid out so you can make a little or a lot, depending on your family size or how much you want to freeze. The book also has breakfast and lunch recipes and ideas, as well as snacks and side dishes. The web site is wonderful - with even more recipes! This book is for everyone who loves to cook, hates to cook, or has never cooked before. It has saved my grocery budget.
Rating: 
Summary: Gross Recipes - Big Disappointment
Review: I bought this book and the Once-A-Month cooking book. I was *very* disappointed with this book. It's like a workbook, which is a good idea. But, the systems is not as coordinated as the Once-A-Month cooking. It leaves it up to you to pick serving sizes. Since you do that, you have to use the workbook to figure out what you need to buy, etc. Plus, there are tons of black and white pictures of the people. They went overboard showing all their friends. It seems like a book someone in your neighborhood would put together. Not very professional. Plus, the recipes. I found ONE recipe in the book that sounded good. The recipes were just cheap casserole types of dishes. There were a couple of others, but it all looked pretty yucky. I am going to try and resell this book back.
Rating:
Summary: This will keep you out of the kitchen!
Review: This will keep you out of the kitchen, and it will still enable you to put food on your table. I love this book, not so much for the recipes, they are good, but the idea and the methods of cooking ahead of time. Cooking ahead of enables you to save money by selecting ingredients with recipes in mind, instead of shopping randomly. You can also save time when you prepare similar dishes. For example when you make pasta sauce you can make spaghetti, manticotti, and lasange all from the same sets of ingredients. I have not fully adapted to their methods, but I was able to stay out of the grocery store, and prepare several meals at once to serve all week. This has been a wonderful blessing, its so hard to come home after work, and prepare a full meal every single night. I would highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to save money, save time, and still eat well.
Rating:
Summary: I wish we had a system like this for laundry. . .
Review: This book and this cooking method are absolute musts for busy times--like tax season for accountants, December for every woman in America, or cooking ahead for the two weeks of vacation you're taking either at home or at the beach condo. I don't cook this way all the time--but I will tell you that the months I do go much more smoothly than the other ones. I began bulk cooking using "Once-A-Month Cooking" and still use some of those recipes. But Tara and Nanci have taken the concept about six steps further. For starters, the math is already done for you if you want to double, triple, etc. the recipe. You can make a little or a lot, depending on your family size (or how much your family likes a certain recipe). And they DO list a lot of vegetarian and low-fat, low-calorie substitutions in many of their recipes. You can usually find those nearly the bottom of the recipe page. I also love the master mixes for the meats and cookies. The meatball/meat loaf one is out of this world. You need to know I am not totally objective where these ladies are concerned. I've gone to church with them for more than eight years. They are two of the funniest, most down-to-earth, approachable women you'll ever meet. And what they have here works for real women with kids, pets, husbands, jobs, and a house to clean. If someone ever comes up with a system to revolutionize housework the way this book does for cooking, life as we know it will be much sweeter indeed:) Buy it, use it. . .and enjoy the results. . .
Rating: 
Summary: Not a bad theory, but actual recipes leave something desired
Review: I've only tried it once so far, but this is what I found. The book is wonderfully ordered, and organized. The spreadsheets very helpful. I made several things, cooked all day, and had a blast doing it. Now that I get to eat what I cooked, I'm finding I have to doctor everything with flavor. It's very bland so far. I'm thinking because the spices don't freeze well, which is fine, but the recipes could have suggested using the spices when heating up. Plan on using the theory often, just using my recipes, and/or fixing theirs.
Rating:
Summary: Good concept, but these recipes are high in fat
Review: I like this concept and the book is very well organized. The only criticism I have is that many of the recipes are very high in fat. Of course, substitutions can be made so by changing the ingredients this way you can still have the wonderful outcome of having a freezer full of ready-made meals.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone Who Eats Needs this Book
Review: I make it a habit to not accept culinary advice from skinny chefs or chefs who claim to fix lean cuisine. No offense intended, but neither Tara or Nanci are slender and they do not claim that eating food prepared with their recipes will make you thin. If you want "lite" food-- go someplace else or cut the fat from these recipes. They have family pleasing foods that will fill you up and leave you satisfied. I was particularly fond of the way they wrote recipies for different quantities of meals and had shopping list sheets. They are so orgnaised that you can be swamped with a million things going on and still shop. Everyone from a harried mother of 9 to a bachelor college student to retired couple could adjust to this. Their tips and short cuts saved me a lot of heartache discovering stuff on my own. I also make it a point to click offor turn the page any recipe that is refered to as "yummy." They use yummy a lot and it drives me nuts as I always envision the recipe tasting of something gelled and colourful. I had to slide on this and have found their "yummy" recipes to be quite delicious!
Rating:
Summary: Everyone Who Eats Needs this Book
Review: I make it a habit to not accept culinary advice from skinny chefs or chefs who claim to fix lean cuisine. No offense intended, but neither Tara or Staci are slender and they do not claim that eating food prepared with their recipes will make you thin. If you want "lite" food-- go someplace else or cut the fat from these recipes. They have family pleasing foods that will fill you up and leave you satisfied. I was particularly fond of the way they wrote recipies for different quantities of meals and had shopping list sheets. They are so orgnaised that you can be swamped with a million things going on and still shop. Everyone from a harried mother of 9 to a bachelor college student to retired couple could adjust to this. Their tips and short cuts saved me a lot of heartache discovering stuff on my own.
| 
