How to Feed Your Whole Family a Healthy Balanced Diet, with Very Little Money and Hardly Any Time, Even If You Have a Tiny Kitchen, Only Three Saucepans ... - Unless You Count the Garlic Crusher...

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View books by Gill Holcombe.

The book Jamies Ministry of Food wishes it was! - Rated
I bought this book when the credit crunch kicked into our family shopping budget and was amazed at how much money I saved each week! The recipes are amazingly simple to follow and the ingredients is very cheap (I bought Jamie's Ministry of Food at the same time and by comparison I found his recipes to be complicated and more importantly, the ingredients he uses are actually very expensive!)
My kids are very fussy eaters and at first I was sure they would turn their noses up. Instead I found clean plates and requests for seconds!
If you cant cook - this book is for you. If you find it difficult keeping to a food shopping budget - this book is for you. If you want to give your family a healthy balanced diet without force feeding them spinach - this book is for you. If you want a book with pretty pictures in it of celebrity chefs and chums with about one recipe that you'll actually use - this book isn't for you.

What every mother needs! - Rated
This is exactly what I have been looking for. I love the fact that the recipes are easy and full of ingredients that are easy to find. I love the weekly planner, as well as the shopping list for the week and also where to get it from!!! Its fantastic. I love the humour in it, the layout of the recipes and the variety of meals and deserts :) Of course, I'll substitute some meals from week to week, but I now have a place to start. My kids have eaten everything we have made so far, which used to be a sore point in this household. Its been a life saver and have recommended this book to all my friends!

All this and funny too! - Rated
I have to say, this is the first time I have ever read a cookery book from cover to cover in the space of a few days. Because it's not just recipes, though there are plenty of those; but nuggets of wisdom about how to get children (and adults) to eat healthily without getting too fat, lots of humour and some apt quotations.

British teenagers today are in the first generation to be less healthy than their parents. We all know they (we?) prefer fizzy drinks and rubbish to eat, if permitted, and we all recognise that there is an awful lot of junk on supermarket shelves.

Being Mrs Microwave myself, with the usual excuses of having too little time to cook, this book was inspirational. In her introduction "Where did we go wrong?" the author quite rightly says no one should have to rely on takeaways or ready meals, and points out that less than 40 years ago cooking was taken for granted, without all the labour saving devices we possess today.

She also reassures that no one has to like cooking, or do a lot of shopping, spend a lot of money, or even be good at it. No need for fancy ingredients either - in fact cooking "real" food is nowhere near as exhausting, tricky or unrewarding as people think (and it's myself I'm psyching up here!)

As well as all the wholesome, quick and enticing recipes, I enjoyed the down to earth approach and humorous asides such as "Cheshire Tart - not a footballer's wife," and "store in a tin with a tight-fitting lid to stop the gingerbread men running away."

For too long, my attitude to cooking has been similar to someone called Katherine Cebrian who is quoted as saying "I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking." If anything is going to motivate me to change, this book will. In fact I can't wait!

Not just any cookery book - Rated
This is the cookery book that I have been searching for: simple,healthy, tasty food, to feed to my 'picky' family. No exotic ingredients to buy (hard to find, and never to be used again). Also it is written with much wit, warmth and wisdom.

Enticing title, dissapointing content. - Rated
Very dissapointing book. I bought this on the strength of the 5 star reviews, however I note that there are now some lower rated ones listed.

The title of the book assumes that the reader has a family. I cannot believe that anyone already cooking for a family needs to be reminded that leftover roast meat can be made into a shepherd's pie. Chicken stock for soups can be made from the carcass or that 'things on toast' can be make a quick meal - just in case we're in any doubt the author lists these - beans, cheese, tinned oily fish Etc. (seriously). I had to re-read the reviews as I thought I must have ordered the wrong book - as a busy working mum, not on a budget but concious of the rising cost of our groceries I was hoping for something rather more insigtful than the gem of knowledge which suggests that homemade soup is a cheap, nutritious and filling.

The final third of the book is dedicated to parent and child baking - fairy cakes, rice krispie cakes Etc. At this point I started looking for the packing tape - I have never bothered returning anything to amazon before and if something is not to my taste, then it generally ends up in the school tombola, however I would be embaressed to be seen passing this on, let alone looking like I was reccommending it.