Know someone who's moving out on their own this spring and they don't have a clue how to cook?! What better start than a Betty Crocker cookbook!
This lightly used soft cover cookbook has more than seventy menus for meals that can be prepared in thirty minutes (or so...) include complete recipes, tips for streamlining meal preparation, and nutritional information.
Pros:
+ Delicious, full, easy to make menus
+ Does not require obscure, hard to find, or expensive ingredients
+ Instructions tell the precise order for each dish in the menu so it all comes out perfectly timed
+ Beautiful full-page illustrations
Cons:
- 30 minutes does not include food prep time, just actual cooking time
- There are not pictures for every single menu
The cons are minimal compared to the pros. Food prep time doesn't add that much more time to the complete process. It may not matter to you that there aren't pictures of every meal, there are for the majority. That is a personal preference of mine in cookbooks.
I have been slowly making my way through this cookbook (about halfway now) and so far everything is scrumptious! I have skipped recipes that include ingredients I don't like or simply substituted for something that I do. Most of the ingredients are staples in my kitchen and find that I just have to go to the store for the fresh items, so it is rather inexpensive meal planning. This is one of my favorite starter cookbooks!
