Make-Ahead Meals for Busy Moms – Cookbook Review

Time & Money-Saving Recipes, Meal Preparation Tips from Jane Doiron

Oct 30, 2009

Jane Doiron's new cookbook serves up delicious recipes for make-ahead dinners and helpful meal preparation tips to save time and money and simplify family dinners.

Busy moms and dads have a lot to balance: demanding work school schedules, errands, extracurricular activities and play dates. With so much to get done, healthy home cooking is often replaced by high fat fast food and expensive prepared meals.

But, with Make-Ahead Meals for Busy Moms (Outskirts Press, 2009,) cookbook author Jane Doiron comes to the rescue of time-crunched families. This busy mom and teacher has created and refined 140 quick and easy recipes that don't sacrifice taste, nutrition or the comforts of a home-cooked meal.

About Make-Ahead Meals

Doiron's approach to cooking and baking is simple: plan ahead, do meal preparation a day or more ahead of time and make good use of the freezer. The prepare-ahead dishes featured in her book can be refrigerated or frozen, then popped into the oven after a long day, or before a party.

Prepare-Ahead Meals for Morning

The Breakfast and Brunch section is mostly standard morning fare. All of the recipes can, of course, be prepared the night before. But what stands out are the many coffee cakes, muffins and quick breads in interesting flavors, like "Cranberry Lemon Bread," "Rhubarb Struesal Bread" and "Mini Pecan Pie Muffins" and "Blueberry Bread." These excellent recipes whip up in almost no time, making them great baked goods to give as gifts.

Delicious Family Dinner Recipes

Hearty main dishes make up the largest section of Make-Ahead Meals. Among the 45 main dish recipes are family favorites and easy dishes like creamy tuna noodle casserole and a delicious cornbread-topped taco pie. The "Broiled Honey Mustard Salmon" is delightfully quick and simple.

There are also plenty of vegetable side dish recipes, with a good mix of hot and cold side dishes. Cookout favorites like broccoli slaw, baked beans and macaroni salad are included. More interesting though are less-common ways to serve veggies, such as "Stir Fried Asparagus" and the cheesy, buttery "Carrot Casserole." Some of the recipes are substantial enough to be meatless main dishes, such as the hearty and savory "Zucchini Parmesan" or a simple baked macaroni and cheese recipe.

Quick and Easy Appetizers and Desserts

Along with the home-cooked family dinners, many of the recipes in Make-Ahead Meals are great for easy entertaining. Appetizers include a tasty and simple bruschetta, easy stuffed mushrooms, meatballs, bacon mini quiches. and several easy dip recipes.

The dessert recipes are also delicious and varied. Many, like the mini cheesecakes, are deceptively easy and require only a few ingredients.The assorted bar cookies, brownies and fudge, are easy make-ahead recipes for holiday entertaining, class parties and bake sales.

Money-Saving Recipes and Tips

As Doiron points out in the cookbook's introduction, prepare ahead meals can save not only time, but money too. The many freezer-friendly recipes make it easy to buy in bulk and save leftovers for another meal later in the month. And Doiron shares her tips for making, packaging and storing freeze-ahead dinners in a brief section at the beginning of the book.

Well-Organized Make-Ahead Cookbook

Like the recipes, the layout of Make-Ahead Meals, is simple, well-thought out and easy-to-follow. The recipes in each section are arranged alphabetically, with a handy list at the beginning of each section..Measurement equivalents are also included in the back for quick reference. All this great cookbook lacks is more pictures of the food. But a bite of one of these scrumptious recipes and readers will forget that minor detail.

Cookbook Information