Customer Rating: 
Summary: not afraid to cook anymore
Comment: I wouldn't say I was an inexperienced cook . . . I'd say phobic. No, this might not be the cookbook for you if you're quite the gourmet and enjoy spending an hour or more in the kitchen to prepare a meal. But if you were never really taught how to cook and have spent most nights asking your partner, "Well, what do you want to do for dinner?" back and forth until someone orders delivery, then this might be just what you need.
I love this book and its companion, EatingWell Serves Two. I seem to have two types of cookbooks: healthy (such as the Mayo Clinic) and quick/easy (as in cookbooks that advertise how few ingredients each recipe will use). EatingWell's Hurry cookbooks are the only ones that combine both.
It's been a learning process for me. Sometimes I need to google ingredients (what are fennel seeds? Where will they be in the grocery store? What's a plum tomato?) or get new equipment (Where's the broiler pan? Oh, oops, I guess we don't have one), but that's a joy, because as I do these things step by step I know I am gaining knowledge and experience (and gear and ingredients).
So let's face it; if I can do these recipes, then they are easy enough to be in some kind of cooking for dummies cookbook, and yet they are super tasty and I'm not embarrassed to serve them, even to people who aren't married to me.
If I could be in an infomercial for these cookbooks I would. In my late 20's it was finally time for me to learn how to cook (and force myself to do it more than once a week), and I don't think I could have done it without these cookbooks.
Customer Rating:
Summary: great tasting dishes for every night of the week
Comment: I love the Eating Well magazine and cookbook - but most of those recipes are too time consuming to do after work during the week. Here is the answer - great tasting dishes for any night of the week.
Customer Rating:
Summary: excellent service; very good book
Comment: Checked out this book from public library and knew I had to have it. Highly recommend.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great cookbook
Comment: As a cancer survivor, I continually try to find tasty yet healthy recipes. (Trying to keep those free radicals at bay) This cookbook fits the bill, as well as the recipes being quick and easy for the most part.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Flavorful, quick, and healthy
Comment: The book starts out with a brief section of instructions in case you aren't wholly experienced with home cooking. This includes planning ahead tips, grocery shopping tips, kitchen equipment you should have, how to approach your cooking, and even food safety concerns. Since there are plenty of inexperienced cooks who might be tempted to pick up a book of quick, healthy meals, this is a handy set of things to include.
Recipe chapters include dinner salads; soups & stews; vegetarian fare; chicken, duck & turkey; fish & seafood; beef, pork & lamb; sauces; sides; and yes, even desserts. There are also some notes on substitutions & equivalencies. There are multiple indexes: a comprehensive index as well as one of recipes that take only 20-30 minutes (most in this book take 45 or less) and one of family-friendly recipes.
I always have a hard time faulting EatingWell's other cookbooks for producing what I consider to be bland recipes, since there's a sizable audience for that kind of fare. However, I was incredibly relieved to find myself wholly enjoying the very flavorful recipes that we made from Healthy in a Hurry. There's a vegetarian chili that is surprisingly delicious, with a simple yet effective spice mix that adds a lot. Recipes range from the elegant (grilled lobster tails with nectarine-avocado salad) to the homey (chicken & white bean soup). These recipes make use of some wonderful international flavors to spice things up in recipes such as roast chicken dal and tandoori chicken with tomato-cucumber raita. The authors seem to have found a better balance between keeping the recipes simple (without using tons of ingredients most cooks might not have) while still interjecting flavor.
Many recipes include mouth-watering photos, and the recipe layout is clean, plain, and easy to make sense of.
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