Book review Sunday — The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook

When I ran the recent giveaway for The $5.00 Dinner Mom Cookbook, the publisher also kindly sent me my own copy for review here. I was excited to read it, because I’m a big fan of Erin Chase’s $5 Dinners blog — what’s not to like about dinners that are simple, cheap, and quick to prepare?

Overall, I liked the cookbook just as well for its emphasis on basics and affordability, with a couple of minor quibbles. The first boils down to a little too much repetition: For instance, a recipe for “slow cooker meatballs with spaghetti” is followed on the next page by a nearly identical recipe for “spaghetti and oven meatballs;” the meatballs are just cooked in the oven instead of the crockpot, and she recommends a different veggie for the side. I’d rather have seen this as one recipe with variations listed at the bottom of the page. The pizza section is similar, with variations basically only seen in the toppings.

Secondly, note that her kids are small. The focus here on realistic portion sizes is useful, but if your family includes teenagers (or, say, a husband on Atkins), you’re probably going to need to add more sides or increase the quantities in these recipes, so will end up spending more than $5.00/meal.

But those are minor quibbles, basically just meaning I’d like to see more recipes and ideas. This would be best as a gift for someone new in the kitchen, because the recipes are basic, easy, and spur ideas for ways to use common ingredients in different ways. It’s also a welcome remedy to the supermarket displays that tout ways to “feed a family of four for $15.00,” especially because the recipes are for entire dinners, including (mostly veggie) sides.

Pick yours up at Amazon.com — or, I saw these on a display at Jewel today!