The Weeknight Survival Cookbook: How to Make Healthy Meals in 10 Minutes
July 18, 2010 · Posted in Bestselling Cooking Books
Product Description
Most quick and healthy cookbooks define “quick” as 30 minutes. In this step-by-step cookbook, registered Dean Irwin takes the term to Olympic speeds, offering 12 weeks of recipes for healthy dishes, each of which can be prepared in just ten minutes!… More >>
The Weeknight Survival Cookbook: How to Make Healthy Meals in 10 Minutes
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5 Responses to “The Weeknight Survival Cookbook: How to Make Healthy Meals in 10 Minutes”
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Right this minute I can tell you what I’m having for dinner every night for the rest of the week. Not only that, the ingredients are already in my house because a weekly shopping list is included in the book! And the meals are super quick to make, healthy (the author’s a nutritionist) and filling. A life-saver for this single guy.
Rating: 5 / 5
I am very pleased with this book: it is simple, the recipes can easily be modified, and best of all: there are shopping lists. I find that a large part of my meal executing woes are caused by not having time to plan and make lists. The foods are very middle of the road: not too gourmet, not too many processed foods. A couple meals a week are vegetarian, but carb watchers can add a fish fillet or chicken or something to the meal easily. Lots of veggies are included too. After purchasing a similar book that ended up suggesting I make “duck tacos” this book is a winner. Tip: take it to an office supply store and have the cover laminated and have it spiral-bound for easy use.
Rating: 5 / 5
Review Update: Completed all the recipes in the book, and am almost all the way through a second time
My boyfriend and I LOVE this book. If you love efficiency, you will too. It’s not gourmet – you probably wouldn’t impress anyone with these recipes, but they’re tasty, well balanced, and sooo easy. The book just makes life simpler by doing all the planning for you – you know that every night, you’ll have everything you need to make a quick, healthy, hot meal.
I think we found about 4 recipes in the book total that we didn’t like very much – and we simply modified them a bit and are now happily working our way through a second time. Everything I said in my original review (below) is still true…we have a quick, easy, low-clean up dinner every night, a healthy home-cooked lunch every day and we’ve been spending about $3-$4 per meal to do it.
Original Review: Three Weeks In
You need to try this book – it’s fantastic. My boyfriend and I have been using it for a few weeks now and can’t stop talking about how great it is. Every night, we make dinner, eat it and have all the dishes done within half an hour. We pack the leftovers in tupperware and have lunch for the next day. The best part is that we don’t have to plan or make up shopping lists, and the food is (amazingly) both tasty and healthy. Of course, there are a few dud recipes – I think in three weeks we came across two dishes that we didn’t like very much, but we’ve taken notes on how we’ll substitute something else next time, and are still really excited about the book.
Positives in our experience
1. We’re saving a lot of time
– No more planning or making up shopping lists
– Shopping is a breeze- the shopping lists in the book are categorized
– We honestly spend only about ten minutes every night on dinner (except Sunday, when it’s just a few hours)
– Less preparation = less clean up.
2. We’re saving money
– The meals are very well sized. Because the meals are designed for four, we eat half for dinner and half for lunch the next day. It’s the perfect amount for us- no eating out, no buying lunches!
– So far, we’ve been spending about $90 each week on the necessary food. That’s feeding two people, two meals a day, six days a week…not bad at all for healthy, home-cooked food, and that $90 also includes the money we spend on breakfast items.
– Less impulse buying. We know exactly what we need, so we don’t end up buying things we never eat. We go into the store with a mission, and don’t stop to think things like, “well, maybe we can eat this later this week”
– We have our shopping lists planned for the next 12 weeks. That means we can look ahead and buy non-perishables when they’re on sale, but only buy as many as we’ll use.
3. We’re eating well
Negatives:
– Every now and then we end up with half a can of something left over, or something like that. However, this is pretty normal when you’re doing any kind of cooking. Not a big deal.
– The books calls for a lot of frozen/canned vegetables instead of fresh. Of course, this is how you can afford to have quick meals, but sometimes it’s nice to substitute the fresh stuff.
Rating: 5 / 5
I just purchased this book, and Ihave yet to try any of the recipes. I was excited about the idea of a book helping me to plan better so that we could eat healthier and I wouldn’t end up spending all evening in the kitchen. The basic concept of this book is that you make one big meal a week and use the leftovers to make other meals throughout the week. Meaning less prep time on weeknights. This means that one night you’ll have chili. The next night you’ll have chili stuffed baked potatoes. Then on the third day you’ll have chili something else. Some people might not like this kind of repetition, but others will appreciate the convenience. There are 12 weeks of meals included in this book, with few repeats. Usually three or four of the meals are similar and two others are simple recipes that are easily made in a few minutes.
I plan to use this book three to four nights a week–on my nights to cook. There were usually only three recipes a week that my husband and I were interested in. It’s too bad this book doesn’t have any pictures. But all in all, I’m excited to try it out.
Update after two weeks: Though my husband has enjoyed my using this book because I’ve made some dinners that we liked but might not have made without this impetus, I think we are going to abandon this system. Too often the shopping lists advise you to buy a particular size package of an item, but the recipe only uses half of it (or less). But there have been a few good recipes. We especially enjoyed the Spanish Rice with Sausage and the Corn Chowder.
Rating: 3 / 5
This is the first cookbook I have been able to really use. I have used it for three complete weeks and am thrilled. You buy all the ingredients you need for one week at a time. Shopping lists for the week are provided and even broken down by section of the grocery store ie. “frozen foods”, “canned goods” etc. You do all the cooking for the week on Sunday and even this only takes a couple of hours. The rest of the week you assemble nutritious meals in 10 to 20 minutes! And all the meals taste good! I would highly reccommend this for any busy person who wants to provide nutritious meals with a minimun of weekday prep time. An excellent holiday gift for busy people.
Rating: 5 / 5