Food52 A New Way to Dinner: A Playbook of Recipes and Strategies for the Week Ahead

by Amanda Hesser, Merrill Stubbs, Food52

A smart, inspiring cookbook showing how to plan, shop, and cook for dinners (and lunches and desserts) all through the week. The secret? Cooking ahead. Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, founders of the online kitchen and home destination Food52, pull off home-cooked dinners with their families with stunning regularity. But they don't cook every night. Starting with flexible base dishes made on the weekend, Amanda and Merrill mix, match, and riff to create new dinners, lunches, and even desserts throughout the week. Blistered tomatoes are first served as a side, then become sauce for spaghetti with corn. Tuna, poached in olive oil on a Sunday, gets paired with braised peppers and romesco for a fiery dinner, with spicy mayo for a hearty sandwich, and with zucchini and couscous for a pack-and-go salad. Amanda and Merrill’s seasonal plans give you everything you need to set yourself up well for the week, with grocery lists and cooking timelines. They also share clever tips and tricks for more confident cooking, showing how elements can work across menus and seasons to fit your mood or market, and how to be scrappy with whatever’s left in the fridge. These building blocks form A New Way to Dinner, the key to smarter, happier cooking that leaves you with endless possibilities for the week ahead.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction, Reference, Food and Drink, Adult

280 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 18, 2016

About the author

Amanda Hesser has been a food columnist and editor at the New York Times for more than a decade. She is the author of the award-winning Cooking for Mr. Latte and The Cook and the Gardener and edited the essay collection Eat, Memory. Hesser is also the co-founder of food52.com. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Tad Friend, and their two children.

Reviews

[Kristie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book includes everything, even tips on how to use the book. Grocery lists are included, as well as tricks for storing food, time-saving tips, how to keep fresh ingredients as long as possible, and how to reheat or freeze items.

There are some recipes in the book that I would like to try, but I probably wouldn’t do a full week’s worth. In fairness, I tend to have busy weekends and often have more time to cook during the week right now. So, taking several hours to prepare a week’s worth of food on a weekend wouldn’t work for me. I do understand that I could also do the food prep during the week. However, I may also be a bit too picky for someone else to pick my week’s meals. I like one recipe and don’t like another.

Fortunately, there are some alternates offered for some menu items, such as a pear galette in place of a rhubarb galette. The book also explains that you don’t need to make all the menu items for the week and gives you ways to personalize the menus a bit.

Some of the recipes include ingredients that I have never heard of before, even some of the main ingredients. So, I’m thinking that some of these recipes may be a bit too fancy for my taste. Though, some of them seem more common and others I might try when it’s just myself and my husband for something different. I wonder though how many of them are really kid friendly. The authors talk about their kids eating these foods, but if your child is not accustomed to this type of food. they may be hesitant (or outright refuse…) to try it.

The book has a great format for someone that wants to follow a plan. I think it would be great for people that don't want to have to plan dinners on their own or think too much about the week’s menu, but still want full home cooked meals, including desserts. Unfortunately, I think I’ll use it more as a regular cookbook. Though I may try to do a 2 or maybe even 3 day week at some point, if I’m feeling brave, it’s not something I would personally use on a regular basis.

[Samantha (AK)]

If you are the primary cook in an upper-middle-class American family of four, and inclined to be organized, this book is for you.

Cookbook is divided into four seasonal sections, with four weekly meal plans in each, complete with pre-organized shopping lists. (If you’re excluding or scaling down recipes for that week, you will still need to do the math, but it’s a start.) Meals in each ‘week’ are designed to synergize for reinvention in non-boring ways. If you’re tired of making one-pot meals, or just need a spark of inspiration for your leftovers, this is useful reading. But the actual principles are basic home-ec plus a little imagination.

Couple of things: First, This is not a frugal cookbook. Many weeks call for things like prosciutto, or squid, or multiple meats in the same week. You can expect meat and/or dairy to appear in nearly every meal, and desert, though easy to cut out, is an assumed part of your diet.

Second, even scaling down recipes, I do not need to make something new every night. At best I’ll make two, possibly three of the suggested meals per week, and that’s pushing it. I’m just not going to consume enough food in one sitting (even of these lightweight recipes) to make buying all the ingredients worthwhile. (Diminishing returns on the downscale/cost).

Worth a read-through for ideas, but see if you can borrow it for a test-run before you drop money on your own copy.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is it cheating to count a cookbook?!? I am putting this on here because I want to acknowledge how amazing it is. Seasonal recipes that includes multiple ways to prep, use, and store ingredients. This is completely in line with my food and home cooking ethic. Will be evoking it’s spirit often!

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a fan of the Food52 website; most the recipes are reliably tasty and easy. I was excited when I saw this book on the list for fall 2016's cookbook releases. I love the premise of the book - I already meal plan and cook on the weekends, so this type of approach really speaks to me. And it's a beautiful book, with lot s of recipes that I want to try.

What I was hoping for was more of a discussion of this strategy. You can pick it up by looking through the "game plans"; for example, you will see in one week that you make creamed kale on the weekend and then eat it with gnocchi one night, and rice and a fried egg on another night. If you are an experienced enough cook you can see how you might apply that without the help of the book. But, I would have liked to have seen a more elaborate discussion of this, which I think would have been useful for more novice cooks, or those not used to meal planning. For example, cook a big pot of rice, and you can use it in soup, stir fry (or fried rice), as an accompaniment to fish or meat, as part of the filling for stuffed vegetables, or in a cold rice salad. Nick Evans' book on leftovers is really effective for this (although the recipes are too basic for me). I think for me, this book, combined with the inspiration I get from Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal (as well as Leftovers) will work well. Her book is basically no structure, this book is too much structure, and then I can find my happy medium. I tend to cook everything on the weekend, but, to make myself more sane, I need to scale back and realize I can leave a few things to during the week and cook up more components on the weekend.

In terms of the recipes, I find that there are many I want to try. There are some tough to find ingredients for some areas of the country (e.g. ramps), but I know I have enough cooking experience that I can make substitutions when I want, or substitute whole other dishes to make the approach work for me, my life, and my tastes. This is another reason why it may not suit the beginner cook.

The other thing I wonder about for people with families is if the recipes are enough food...for example, gnocchi or a salad might not be a solid enough dinner for some people (these would work for me, but I wonder if men and growing kids would find it filling).

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am having a hard time imagining the ideal audience for this book. It's both too basic and too fancy for me. I can't imagine people who struggle with planning a week's worth of nightly meals wanting to make grilled squid salad. But, maybe I am suffering from a lack of imagination. I do like how the recipes are arranged seasonally, and the book includes many interesting recipes -- though many are just a bit too interesting for my family -- but the overall weekly plans aren't particularly practical, at least for me.

[Jenni Link · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really excited by the premise of this book: cook for a couple of hours on Sunday to prepare interchangeable elements of five different dinners to eat for the rest of the week. But it was not as substantial as I had hoped. If you already cook daily for a family, you probably already know how to manage your pantry and fridge just as well as these authors do.

[January Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book, I like the layout, I like the recipes.

However, I do not think it is ideal for two working parents planning ahead. I am not a parent, but even preparing ahead just for the two of us is a big undertaking with these recipes, and I am certainly not spending weekends grocery shopping and cooking for the week ahead.

A really nice cookbook, but not what I am looking for as far as plan ahead meals. As far as a regular cookbook, with a Seasonal layout, and full lists of ingredients and instructions, I highly recommend it.

I am sure some Mom's out there will find this useful too, it simply and honestly isn't what I was looking for, but I certainly cannot knock the quality of this book because of my personal search for plan ahead meals!

Go give it a try and get back with me about what ideas you tried and how it worked out.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This cookbook shows you how to plan meals, food shop and cook base dishes on one day and then turn those dishes into meals for the week ahead.

This is an ideal cookbook for anyone that likes to meal plan and prepare meals ahead and be an organised home cook.

There are menus for the 4 Seasons of the year which is a good way to save money buying produce in season is less expensive and it's always fresher and better quality when in season.

There are 2 menus for each Season as well, one by Amanda and one by Merrill.

I menu plan for the week ahead but would really like to start getting more organised with my planning so that I prepare some of the dishes ahead of time to make it easier for mid week meals. This cookbook is just what I need to do this.

Whilst this is an American cookbook the ingredients look like they can be found here in Australia pretty easily.

I found the recipes very easy to follow with simple set out with instructions.

As well as recipes there are lots of tips for storing, freezing and reheating meals as well which will be necessary to do if you are cooking mostly on one day for the week ahead.

I recommend this cookbook to busy people who want to meal prep and cook the bulk of their meals in one day and enjoy stress free meals during the week.

Thanks to Netgalley for provide a copy of this ebook for review in exchange for an honest review.

[Robert Hudder · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, their take on menu planning. Went through the headnotes and several of the menus. It does give you a sense on how to plan meals and do up weekly lists. Cook on the weekend for the whole week to minimize prep time during the week. Pretty straightforward.

I still feel strongly that home economics should be taught in school. It would make this style of book redundant. The skills showcased here are not explicit and you learn about them through the doing and the approach shown here.

But the Donna Hay book I read a few days ago, or any classic cookbook will have similar tips. I can't fault this book for doing something in an updated way but I am just grouchy that this has to be done at all instead of being passed down. My own sons suffer from the inability to sit and listen to me grouse about cooking and how to do it best for a family so they too will be sitting in their 30s trying to figure it out. Maybe a book or a website will give them the requisite knowledge. This wouldn't be a bad one to have, if you find yourself in that situation.

[roxi Net · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read a few Food52 books and I appreciate their consistency in a beautifully designed and informative book.

This time around, I really like that they’ve ‘paired’ the recipes with meal plans which is something that helps with budget and time (and lack of creativity). It has complete week meal plans (“Game Plan”) that has a “brown bag” option including the grocery list.

I’m really not one to plan ahead (which hurts the wallet and has food go to waste), so this book is a great encouragement for actually sticking to a plan (that I didn’t write) and having great food to boot and fairly simple recipes. I think the instructions are a bit too detailed for my taste, but then again, it’s probably the rebel in me that scoffs at instructions. Thus the reason for wobbly furniture in my home.

[Kathryn Nenning · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cookbook from the website Food52, ‘A New Way to Dinner: A Playbook of Recipes and Strategies for the Week Ahead’ by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, is designed to help busy parents get a delicious meal on the table every weeknight quickly and with minimum stress. They have created 16 weekly meal plans, 4 for each season, that help streamline what is typically a nightly slug, allowing an interesting and tasty dinner to be prepared quickly and enjoyed before everyone dissolves into a puddle of hungry misery. Their strategy is clever – they have you prepare a few main components for the upcoming week on the weekend, then do minimal final prep on the evening of. The meals are designed so that you can use the main components in different ways to create 5 varied, non-repetitive dinners, or at least that is the goal.

I really like this cookbook, and used it this past fall and winter as a basis for planning what to cook for the week. I loved having a pile of great recipes in front of me not just for an entire meal, but for an entire week of meals – mains and sides and condiments and desserts - all in one place, complete with a grocery list and a day-by-day plan. And the recipes are really good – some simple, some more complicated, some familiar, some I had never heard of. I appreciate that it calls for ingredients like preserved lemons, smoked paprika, anchovies and other such 'modern' pantry staples, and thus sets itself apart from a run of the mill ‘mom’ cookbook. Nonetheless, I am perplexed by a few things -

1) If the point of this cookbook is to make planning and cooking meals easier and less stressful, why does it often call for produce/meat/fish that are hard to find? For example, the very first weekly menu calls for pea shoots, ramps, and ground lamb, and doesn't highlight any substitutes (and even mentions that ramps have a 'ridiculously brief' season). Since these ingredients are required for every single dinner that week, even if you do find substitutes you are facing disappointment and frustration each and every night as you read through the recipes and are reminded of what you do not have. In other weekly menus you would need items such as Fuyu persimmons, garlic scapes, baby turnips, shelled peas, Atlantic char, salt cod, squid, fresh crabmeat, oxtails, and raw pork or chicken bones. Additionally, ingredients that are otherwise easy to find are given qualifiers that make them either harder to get or likely to be more expensive - to whit: 'fresh' ricotta, 'aged' sherry vinegar, 'large' couscous (which is a completely different type of couscous, so you can't just drop the 'large', as you could with the 'aged') and 'hulled' barley (no idea what would change if you dropped the 'hulled', but presumably something). All these ingredients sound great, but I would prefer they not be part of the cookbook that is supposed to make my life easier. Since it covers only 4 weeks of each season, leaving one plenty of other weekends to make ramp butter, why complicate matters? Especially as it otherwise satisfies their presumed target audience of the more-sophisticated-than-average cook.

2) Although I am not, nor anywhere near, a vegetarian, I also don't want to eat meat every single evening. And have I been reading the wrong blogs, or is it not true that many people are trying to cut down on their consumption of animal products? This cookbook, however, is extremely heavy on meat. Although the menus call for plenty of fresh vegetables, they are still centered around meat, and only occasionally fish, calling for it generally 5 out of 5 nights. And mostly not friendlier meat, like chicken, or little meat, like a bit of ham in a pea soup, and not in a way that you could easily work around, like leaving beef strips out of a stir-fry. I am talking about big hunks of pork, dutch ovens full of oxtails, and slabs of beef short ribs. And since my teenagers seem to decide every other night that they are vegetarian, this poses a problem. Here is part of a shopping list for one week‘s meals: One pound ground beef, a half-pound ground pork, and 4 pounds of pork shoulder. (Oh, also some pancetta, but at that point who's counting?). How do you substitute your way around that?

3) The menu plans do not always live up to their promise of prepping a small(ish) list of items ahead, then using them in different ways during the week. One plan has you making 3 pounds of ground lamb into patties using middle-eastern spices (which sounds delicious); then on two of the nights they are served as patties with different sides, and on a third night the patties are broken up to serve with pasta. They even suggesting having a leftover patty for lunch one day. I don’t know about you, but to me that is a lot of the same meat with the same spices in one week. Another weekly menu has you roasting chicken legs with tomatoes, garlic, herbs and wine, which also sounds delicious. But again, they want you to serve it two nights that week as is, just with different sides dishes, which is not my idea of variety. They then have you use the chicken a third night in a warm chicken salad, which is a great riff, but still means eating chicken 3 out of 5 nights. Do I need to point out that they call for buying 6 pounds of chicken for this weekly menu, or is that already obvious to you? Why not have you buy a much more reasonable 4 pounds of chicken and serve it just two nights? Yes, you would then have to prep something else for the missing chicken night, but with all the sides and marinades and other bits they have you making, I think there is a fifth meal to be found in there somewhere without much extra work. Taking a few ingredients and making them work in different ways: good; 24 limes for a week’s meal: borderline cuckoo.

Those are my quibbles, and although relatively big as quibbles go, quibbles they remain. I still love planning our meals by looking at their weekly menus as a footprint, then substituting things out to make it less meat and exotic fruit/vegetable heavy. I have some recipe favorites in constant rotation, such as overnight pork (I said I wasn’t a vegetarian), spicy roasted cauliflower, barley salad with onion confit and Fuyu persimmons (in my case bulgur and pears), anchovy dressing, applesauce cake, and pickled onions. Especially the pickled onions. While a mere condiment, they require exactly 4 pantry ingredients, take 15 minutes to make, keep for weeks, and give a fresh crunch and bright zing to all manner of meals – and actually do what the cookbook promises - transform Wednesday’s chicken roasted in wine into Friday’s mexican-spiced tacos.

[Marti · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am definitely not enough of a hipster for this one. Creamed kale? Oxtail hash over toast? Are these women really serving these meals to their children? Are their children actually eating them? Are they real children?

There are a few recipes where I'm like, "Yes. Gimme." The creamy butternut squash soup with sherry, for example. That sounds delicious. Lime ice cream. Yes, tell me more. But overall I was left with a feeling of "meh."

There are a fair number of good tricks in the book about preparing, storing, and reheating foods. And if you are into these recipes, the shopping lists and tips on when to prep recipes for later in the week would be really useful.

[Jocelin · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the main reasons I picked up this book was because of the author, Amanda Hesser. I remember her from the movie "Julie & Julia". I have never read anything in her column about food but, this cookbook fascinated me. I liked that it was broken down into different seasons. The author also illustrated the need of buying the right ingredients to create a meal plan that worked for the week. It's a very easy and creative new way of think about how to have each meal. Who hasn't asked the question, "What will I eat today?"

[Doris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel approach: four weeks worth of menus for each of the four seasons, with the recipes, shopping lists, and advice for batch cooking the previous weekend. Repurposing leftovers for lunch is also covered, as well as tips for streamlining even further the weekend batch cooking. The recipes themselves are mostly tasty sounding, though I have yet to try any of them.
Realistically, though, I can't see adopting any of these menus even in part, so its value on that score is more that of a model.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the recipes in this book are simple and straight forward and tasty! Nothing really, fancy - just good solid food that can be mixed and matched with other good solid food to make or enhance a meal.
The method and strategies for cooking for an entire week on Sunday and combining foods to make meals might work well for some but I cannot imagine it ever working in my house - food for a week would be gone in a day if left in the fridge unguarded. They don't have four hungry teenagers yet. We'll see how this plays out in years to come.

[Melissa Borsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. I really liked the premise of this book, planning, shopping, and cooking for a whole week. The book doesn't just stop there, it also tells you how to use the meals for leftovers and what to have for dessert (recipes included). Overall, it's a great plan and I highly recommend this cookbook!

[Debbi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although many of the recipes in this book are good, this is a cookbook that focuses on organization. It is aimed at the young, busy householder. Cook on the weekend for the rest of the week. I would consider passing this on to my daughters, but I didn't find many new innovated ideas.

[Kyra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so confused why this book is getting anything under 5 star reviews. This is, in my opinion, the best cookbook I have ever read and used. It feeds a family of four perfectly for a week and the recipes are creative and delicious. It follows the seasons so you can use the gorgeous produce from the farmers market year round. It is formatted in a unique and extremely useful way that allows you to have meals planned for the week (with a grocery list!!) and prevents waste by telling you the best ways to store the food you get and how to use leftovers. While I understand that the recipes are formatted for an east coaster and so some of the ingredients mentioned are impossible to find in some areas of the country (ramps for example) the recipes are able to be messed with a little (switch out some ingredients, substitute the beef for salmon, etc) without loosing quality. This cookbook is perfect for anyone that hates the standard rice, meat, and vegetable meal prepping and are trying to get better at using leftovers to make new and different dishes. If you have busy weekends or don’t like spending time cooking maybe this isn’t for you, but trust me every dish I have tried is worth the few hours you set aside in the weekend. I couldn’t recommend this book enough!

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are looking for very specific instructions for each weeks dinners from shopping list to how to schedule your cooking time, what to do with your leftovers and how to reheat everything, this book is for you. The recipes, surprisingly, are not dumbed down or too complicated but they will push people to try some new things (think brandade and asparagus and pea salad and pasta). The two authors have slightly different attitudes toward cooking from the more structured (follow the recipe!) to the more relaxed (sub this or that), and they often offer different versions of a dish.
What I found most useful given I don’t want a grocery list for a set of structured recipes was the reheating instructions like don’t reheat the medium rare cooked steak and reheat the roasted potatoes in a cast iron skillet. And, I love the chocolate toast, but for my tastes there is just a bit too much rhubarb and asparagus in this cookbook!
The recipes are generally quick or provide ways to make stuff ahead so the actual get dinner on the table time can be decreased.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, I'm marking this as read book for a cookbook. I read it to see if I liked it. So over all love the concept of this cookbook- make items ahead of time and then reheat/reuse in other recipes through out the week. The authors suggest just storing a lot these in the pans but seriously who has fridge space for 2-3 meals on top regular groceries? Also lots of these dishes seemed to be side dishes that you make ahead and you still prep meat/pasta day of. I sit there and think eh. You're still cooking but I suppose making 1 dish is better then 2 or 3 plus side. Also some of these dishes seemed light ie. " ricotta toasts, thinly sliced prosciutto, roasted asparagus, and good chocolates." this would not fill my Montana man up and so that would be a worthless dinner for us. Never the less I will try doing Amanda's Summer week this summer and there are other recipes in here that will be cooked. First one will be Schlumpf!

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the premise of this book but found it lacked variety in the kinds of meals it offers. Overall I found the biggest downfall a lack of colour and variety in the meals. Flipping through the first few pages we see the same colours and flavours over and over again.e.g. lightly breaded chicken fingers with asparagus, breaded fish with arugula, pasta with asparagus, roasted potatoes with asparagus, eggs with asparagus, grain salad with asparagus. All these recipes use pesto or lemon flavours and to be fair they all look delicious and my family enjoyed the ones I cooked but as a menu for a week I will not be satisfied with the same flavours over and over again. I understand the idea is to make some things ahead and use them throughout the week but I like to mix up flavours throughout the week. As I flip through the book and the seasons progress I see more of the same - a white meat accompanied by bread or rice and some greens.

[LAMONT D · Rating 3 out of 5]

THIS COOKBOOK WAS GIVEN TO US BY OUR SON AND DAUGHTER-IN-LAW FOR CHRISTMAS. IT IS A REALLY NICE HARD-COVERED BOOK WITH BEAUTIFUL PICTURES. THE ONLINE WEBSITE AND FOOD COMMUNITY SURROUNDING FOOD52 PROBABLY HAVE BEEN PROPULAR FOR MANY YEARS THOUGH WE ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH IT. THE CONCEPT IS GOOD IN THAT YOU WANT TO BE ORGANIZED AND PLAN YOUR MEALS FOR THE WHOLE WEEK. THERE WERE MANY INGREDIENTS AND COOKING TECHNIQUES THOUGH THAT WERE FOREIGN TO ME WHICH MAKES THE COOKBOOK FAIRLY UNPRACTICLE. I WOULD LOVE THOUGHTO TRY SOME OF THEIR MEALS JUST TO SEE IF I COULD PULL IT OFF BECAUSE THEY DO GIVE LOTS OF TIPS AND POINTERS ON HOW TO EXECUTE THEIR PLANS ESPECIALLY AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BOOK. I FOUND A FEW RECEIPES THAT WE COULD TRY RIGHT AWAY INCLUDING A DESERT I HAD NEVER HEARD OF (SCHLUMPH - P. 66). YOU LEARN SOMETHING EVERY DAY.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

This cookbook appears intended for people who:

- like to cook
- have time to cook
- have time to grocery shop
- have access to grocery stores selling a wide variety of ingredients
- have money to spend on expensive ingredients
- are feeding others who are willing to eat things like grilled squid salad


I don't fit into those categories, so this cookbook didn't really interest me. To be clear, I would have happily eaten many of the recipes in this book, but no one I live with would have, and I didn't really want to cook the recipes because of the difficulty in getting some of the ingredients.

I was looking more for a cookbook that had basic recipes that could be quickly made and whose leftovers could be repurposed into additional meals. This wasn't it.

[Beka · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely agree with the general concept of prep a bunch on the weekend to make weeknight's easier; I've been doing that for quite a while now. And I did find a few good recipes, but unfortunately a lot of the recipes suffer from NYC chef-itis. They use all sorts of ingredients that I just can't get here in south central TX (or at least without driving to a bunch of different stores and spending 4 times my grocery budget). Still worth a look, but not something I could follow along totally with.

[daemyra, the realm's delight · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really into this for about a month but haven't been able to incorporate this in to my daily home cooking. It's a pretty cookbook with nice thick paper pages and food photography.

The best part of this book is that it tells you how to prep multiple dishes at once so that if when you are prepping your meals for the week ahead, it will tell you how to cook multiple dishes at once. Sometimes I'll cook dishes for a meal that will need to use the oven at some point which messes up the cooking time.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great meal planning book, if you happen to be a certain type of person. I have found, in looking through this book, that I am not that type of person: although I do like going into the week with a plan, I don't cook for a family of 4, and I tend toward plant-based meals. Amanda and Merrill don't shy away from meat, fish, and dessert with every meal. They do offer plenty of adjustments to save on cooking time, swap ingredients, or eliminate some meals altogether. But while there were a few intriguing recipes in here that I might want to try, the majority of them were not for me.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the friendly tone and solid instructions in this book. I find the idea of cooking ahead for the week to be enormously appealing. Some of the recipes do seem a little out there for the average family. (Lots of lamb, and I have no idea where I would even get ox-tail). That said, there are lots of good substitutions offered. This also isn't a book for people who are just getting started cooking. You need a little bit of kitchen intuition to fully understand how to prep everything and successfully plan of the week.

[Eleanor Hoppe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book! I tried twice!

The format - of weekly prep and shopping lists and coordinated meal planning - so appealing.

The second time I got it out of the library and post-it noted all the recipes that I wanted to try.

All but one were desserts.

I gave it four stars for the approach and accessibility. Our tastes just aren't the same. Except in dessert, which counts a lot.

[Zee Monodee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book with some good recipes, but the ultra-structured format might not call to everyone and some might even find it stifling. Kinda felt like there wasn't much wiggle room in the fixed menus, and some of these menus looked a little weird (not to say off) to me. But this could be my background speaking (Non-US, Indian origin) so these menus had me more tilting my head and squinting to make sense of them.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gift for the time-harried, food-particular cook: a shopping and cooking plan for meals that can be prepared in advance to carry you deliciously through the week. It’s not only the recipes that are inspiring, but also the organizing rambunctiousness and confidence-embuing enthusiasm of the authors. Rich in ideas and hand-holding pointers, this is a book that makes itself immediately indispensable.
Nigella Lawson