Cook Books

A good cook book is hard to come by. Most of them seem to be full of crap that I will never make. Either they are full of things that will take way to long (I don't have nor want to spend 4 hours in the kitchen) to make OR they are full of "quick and easy" recipes that are just not even close to being appetizing. Of course there are some good reliable recipes in the Joy of Cooking and the recipes that I have collected from my family. But we were hitting a rut in work day evening meal. Especially since by the time we get home from work we are starving. So we bought MinuteMeals 20-minute gormet menus and I have been really impressed! I have made 5 recipes out of it so far and all of them were really good. There are a few in there that I know i won't make- but for the most part it is a decent book. It is set up with suggested menus and the recipes are all on one page- quite convenient. The steak au poivre took about 25 minutes to make and was excellent.

We also got The Complete Book of Sauces which has turned out to be a great book to have on hand. The classic mushroom sauce was really tasty. On Sunday we used the butter herb sauce to go with shrimp, mussels, and linguini for Dan's birthday dinner- it was incredible, and really easy! We commented on how that meal would have cost us around $100 in a restaurant and we made it with $20 spent on seafood and the ingredients we had in the cupboard!

So I do recommend checking out these two cookbooks!