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I have been satisfied with a number of recipes that I have tried from this book. However, this book does lack a Vegetarian and Seafood section and there are a handful of recipes that are not meant to be freezer meals - which is decieving. The majority of recipes are meat and desserts.
The book, Fix, Freeze, Feast was so good that I started looking for another freezer cookbook to give me more recipes. Other than that, it's worth every penny. Each page has a chart to help you make the amount you need of that recipe.
Boy, am I ever glad I bought it. For instance, one recipe may serve 3, one 4-6, and one 8-10. This one had so many good reviews, I couldn't resist.
If there is a downside to the book, it's that there is too much variation in the servings per recipe. Lots and lots of great recipes, full of great taste and easy instructions. Also, the recipes here are healthier for the most part than those in many other freezer cookbooks.
You need to pay attention to this when calculating your amounts. Try the Chicken Pot Pie, Hot Fudge Sauce, Cranberry Chicken, and Taco Soup for starters.
Something I like about this book is that it has the recipes like they have in the freezer preparation places - things like chicken breasts in the marinades stored in the ziplock bags. One of the things I have been frustrated with in some of my past OAMC books is that the recipes are just not the "right kind" that I am looking for. These are not generally "exotic" recipes, so I don't see much call for ingredients of a more unusual nature (i.e. The menus were really limited and 90% of them include cream of mushroom soup (not that I have anything against cream of mushroom soup - it's one of my favorites - but I want more variety, you know).
I don't like that there isn't a regular index where you could look up peppers for instance and find all the recipes that have peppers in them. The other frustration I had was that many of them precooked all the meals and just reheated them later. While that has its place, in my personal opinion, that tends to make your meals feel more like TV dinners and sometimes the quality just isn't there the second time around. If you click on the left on Index it will show you all the recipes in the book (not table of contents - that only shows the general categories). Apart from the ones you might expect to be vegetarian (like some side dishes for example), I don't think there are a whole lot of vegetarian recipes in this book and wouldn't recommend it if that is what you were looking for. Overall they have ingredients I am likely to already have in my pantry or that are easy to find.
it leans more towards the standards of onions, celery, etc). I think the majority of recipes are kid friendly (because basically this is NOT a gourmet cookbook).
But for new recipes to try for chicken, beef, pork, etc. They have things like spaghetti sauce and tacos that are so fast and easy to make that it is almost not worth predoing them.
I consider that an annoying inconvenience, though not a huge big deal. Recipes are shown with 1 batch, usually of 6-8 servings (plus x2, x4, x6 for appetizers and x3, x6, x9 for the entrees).
Instructions include clearly laid out cooking day and serving day notes. Many, if not most, of the side dishes are dishes that are best made on the day of serving, which lead me to the question of "so why did you include them in a freezer cooking book."For the vegetarians - there is no separate section for vegetarian recipes.
this is definitely worth getting.
What I didn't like was the "blah-ness" of the recipes. What I liked about the book was that each recipe, as made, makes a bunch -- usually 6 to 8 servings -- we're a family of 3, so I would have extra to freeze for later. As a long-time fan of Dream Dinners, I wanted to find a cookbook to help me create dinners that I could prepare and freeze. When the book arrived, I eagerly read it cover to cover, ready to select all of our yummy make-ahead meals. But it gets better. Each recipe includes a set of columns where the authors have calculated the amount of each ingredient you'll need if you want to double, triple or quadruple the recipe. I only found one that I wanted to try, and my family found it mushy and tasteless. I ended up returning the book and hope to have better luck with the two other "Once a Month Cooking" books I selected.
This book has really helped with my OAMC. I have saved a lot of money and the food is great. My family has loved all the recipes I have made so far. The ingredients are basic, so there is no need to buy expensive hard to find things.
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