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Rating: 
Summary: Yes, 29 Minutes---Really!
Review: Back in the old days when I was young and childless, I spent my Wednesday evenings cooking from Pierre Franey's weekly "60-Minute Gourmet" column in the NYTimes. I considered the enterprise a loving weekly gift to my new husband, but 60 minutes? No way. More like 2 and a half hours. Since then I budget at least twice the time for cooking that 'time-saving' recipes claim, and often I'll still be scrambling. This book really makes good on its promise: of 8 weekday meals I've prepared so far, none took me longer than 30 minutes. Better yet, the food is really delicious. Many of these recipes do honorable double-duty in the "terrific-for-guests" file as well as the one for "when-I-get-home-after-8PM". There are recipes for 29-minute meals and recipes for freeze-ahead one-pot meals, but the section that's changed my life, that has made me so much happier about cooking for my family while I work 55 hours per week that I am writing this review like some kind of Born-Again Home Ec major, are the 8 weeks' worth of weekly meal plans. You get a shopping list for the week (bliss! a shopping list that really is so efficient for the week that 1 trip does the job without wasting food) and recipes with logically laid out preparation plans for complete dinners for the week. The trick is you cook like a demon on the weekend to prepare the foundations (meats, sauces, soup bases etc) for the weekday meals...but the results, during the week, are quick, delicious, and interesting. This is a deceptively slim volume which is actually a goldmine. Bravo, Susan Ott.
Rating:
Summary: Yes, 29 Minutes---Really!
Review: Back in the old days when I was young and childless, I spent my Wednesday evenings cooking from Pierre Franey's weekly "60-Minute Gourmet" column in the NYTimes. I considered the enterprise a loving weekly gift to my new husband, but 60 minutes? No way. More like 2 and a half hours. Since then I budget at least twice the time for cooking that 'time-saving' recipes claim, and often I'll still be scrambling. This book really makes good on its promise: of 8 weekday meals I've prepared so far, none took me longer than 30 minutes. Better yet, the food is really delicious. Many of these recipes do honorable double-duty in the "terrific-for-guests" file as well as the one for "when-I-get-home-after-8PM". There are recipes for 29-minute meals and recipes for freeze-ahead one-pot meals, but the section that's changed my life, that has made me so much happier about cooking for my family while I work 55 hours per week that I am writing this review like some kind of Born-Again Home Ec major, are the 8 weeks' worth of weekly meal plans. You get a shopping list for the week (bliss! a shopping list that really is so efficient for the week that 1 trip does the job without wasting food) and recipes with logically laid out preparation plans for complete dinners for the week. The trick is you cook like a demon on the weekend to prepare the foundations (meats, sauces, soup bases etc) for the weekday meals...but the results, during the week, are quick, delicious, and interesting. This is a deceptively slim volume which is actually a goldmine. Bravo, Susan Ott.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe they meant working PART Time!
Review: I am newly married and now have someone to cook for but find with my hour long commute its just to much to cook at all let alone healthy, inexpensive meals that actually taste good. This book was such a bummer. I went grocery shopping yesterday and ended up in the store for 2 hours. I couldnt find the special bread, or the anchovie paste or the gardeneria salad. I even had the grocery store people stumpped. I substituded what I could but the frusteration is still there. When I got home I started the first meal in the menu. It smelled awful 1 1/2 hrs when it was done cooking. So bad that my husband wouldnt eat it, he ate leftovers from the night before. Now i'm locked into this awful menu (becaue all the food's bought) and not looking forward to the next 6 days. Another note: There are no shortcuts, surprisingly. The recipe for fish and chips has you slicing 8 potatoes into fries and baking them for an hour. It seems to me that its cheaper and faster to buy a bag of frozen fries and cook those for 30 minutes. Sigh. I'm still in search of a good time saving cook book with good food.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe they meant working PART Time!
Review: I am newly married and now have someone to cook for but find with my hour long commute its just to much to cook at all let alone healthy, inexpensive meals that actually taste good. This book was such a bummer. I went grocery shopping yesterday and ended up in the store for 2 hours. I couldnt find the special bread, or the anchovie paste or the gardeneria salad. I even had the grocery store people stumpped. I substituded what I could but the frusteration is still there. When I got home I started the first meal in the menu. It smelled awful 1 1/2 hrs when it was done cooking. So bad that my husband wouldnt eat it, he ate leftovers from the night before. Now i'm locked into this awful menu (becaue all the food's bought) and not looking forward to the next 6 days. Another note: There are no shortcuts, surprisingly. The recipe for fish and chips has you slicing 8 potatoes into fries and baking them for an hour. It seems to me that its cheaper and faster to buy a bag of frozen fries and cook those for 30 minutes. Sigh. I'm still in search of a good time saving cook book with good food.
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed, but still an inspiring favorite
Review: I really really like this cookbook. It not perfect (but what cookbook is?), and I have a number of small issues with it, but I have found it to be an inspiring resource for meal planning, and the recipes are, on the whole very very good. I have had it less than a year, and it is already one of the most well-used cookbooks in my kitchen.As a measure of how much I like this cookbook, I have already bought a copy as a gift for at least one person, and would do so again. What I like best about it: It provides a lot of creative ideas for both quick meals and planning meals in advance, and most of them are relatively straightforward and very good -- with a lot of variety. (Much better than your average "easy meal" cookbooks.) I've particularly enjoyed the 7-day meal plans, and all three I've tried have been all been excellent, and fun to execute. Similarly, there are some very tasty quick recipes, as well as some good ideas for meals that can be prepared in advance. You really can't go too far wrong. My (very minor) complaints (or, why I gave it only four stars): -- Some of the recipes in the 7-day meal plans and the master recipes (make one thing, use it three ways) seem a little forced -- things you would never choose to make unless you were trying to use up ingredients from some of the other meals. Likewise, sometimes the "time-saving strategies" are a little silly (e.g. "save 1 TB lemon juice for use later in the week"). -- Overall, I've found the 7-day meal plans to be pretty heavy on premium ingredients and animal protein. For me, 4lbs of beef, 2lbs of lamb and 3lbs of chicken (admittedly the "hale and hearty" meal plan) is really a whole lotta meat for a family of four for a week. (And in our family, only two of us are actually eating these meals.) For smaller families or appetites, you may need to cut back on the quantities, or plan to make only some of the recipes in a week, having leftovers the other nights. -- Not everything in the cookbook is really that simplified. You have to be a sufficiently experienced cook to know what you're up against, and how much time you really have, and make your meal decisions accordingly. Nothing is really complicated, but you're not necessarily going to be able to whip up dinner in 15 minutes in each case. Plan accordingly. All that said, if you like to cook good food, but are busy, tired, and uninspired, this is a terrific resource and well worth the investment. The recipes are good, and the meal-planning ideas have been useful as given, and have inspired me to think of other ways to organize our family meals. But you're still going to have to put in some effort -- it's not going to cook your meals for you!
Rating:
Summary: Flawed, but still an inspiring favorite
Review: I really really like this cookbook. It not perfect (but what cookbook is?), and I have a number of small issues with it, but I have found it to be an inspiring resource for meal planning, and the recipes are, on the whole very very good. I have had it less than a year, and it is already one of the most well-used cookbooks in my kitchen. As a measure of how much I like this cookbook, I have already bought a copy as a gift for at least one person, and would do so again. What I like best about it: It provides a lot of creative ideas for both quick meals and planning meals in advance, and most of them are relatively straightforward and very good -- with a lot of variety. (Much better than your average "easy meal" cookbooks.) I've particularly enjoyed the 7-day meal plans, and all three I've tried have been all been excellent, and fun to execute. Similarly, there are some very tasty quick recipes, as well as some good ideas for meals that can be prepared in advance. You really can't go too far wrong. My (very minor) complaints (or, why I gave it only four stars): -- Some of the recipes in the 7-day meal plans and the master recipes (make one thing, use it three ways) seem a little forced -- things you would never choose to make unless you were trying to use up ingredients from some of the other meals. Likewise, sometimes the "time-saving strategies" are a little silly (e.g. "save 1 TB lemon juice for use later in the week"). -- Overall, I've found the 7-day meal plans to be pretty heavy on premium ingredients and animal protein. For me, 4lbs of beef, 2lbs of lamb and 3lbs of chicken (admittedly the "hale and hearty" meal plan) is really a whole lotta meat for a family of four for a week. (And in our family, only two of us are actually eating these meals.) For smaller families or appetites, you may need to cut back on the quantities, or plan to make only some of the recipes in a week, having leftovers the other nights. -- Not everything in the cookbook is really that simplified. You have to be a sufficiently experienced cook to know what you're up against, and how much time you really have, and make your meal decisions accordingly. Nothing is really complicated, but you're not necessarily going to be able to whip up dinner in 15 minutes in each case. Plan accordingly. All that said, if you like to cook good food, but are busy, tired, and uninspired, this is a terrific resource and well worth the investment. The recipes are good, and the meal-planning ideas have been useful as given, and have inspired me to think of other ways to organize our family meals. But you're still going to have to put in some effort -- it's not going to cook your meals for you!
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