Dinner is Ready: 30 Meals in One Day by Deanna Buxton Book Review and Giveaway

Dinner is Ready - 30 Meals in One Day by Deanna Buxton is a book with great tips, a detailed plan for making 30 meals in a day and 150 recipes to choose for slow cooker, stovetop, oven and assemble.  Deanna walks you through step by step from why to freeze, choosing recipes, what to do the day before, cooking day, freezing, thawing, other options and shortcuts.  There are so many reasons why cooking a large amount of food in one day is a way to discover a new kind of freedom.

I absolutely love cooking, but I feel like I'm always in the kitchen. I can't seem to figure out how to make enough meals to last so that I don't have to cook everyday.  I would love to be able to make a lot of food, freeze it and have it handy for those nights that I just don't have time to cook because we had a busy day or that my toddler wants me to hold her all afternoon.  There is just something about knowing what is in the freezer to pull out and place on the table for dinner. 

So I decided to take one day and make 5 meals.  Then I will be 5 meals closer to feeling less stress on one of those nights that I just don't want to cook or can't fit it in.  I chose 1 slow cooker meal (Chicken Cacciatore), 1 oven meal (Porcupine Meatballs), 1 stovetop meal (Beefy Spanish Rice) and 2 assemble meals (Chicken and Dressing, Corkscrew Chicken).  So I prepped all the veggies and cooked the chicken the day before.  I set out all the ingredients and recipe cards in areas around my kitchen.  The great thing about these recipes is that I already had most of the ingredients. 

The CD-ROM that came with this package has quick tools for recipes, menus and shopping lists.  Choose a recipe for your menu and it adds all the ingredients to a shopping list.  You can print recipes and freezer labels as well.  This is very user friendly and adds a great bonus to making cooking 30 meals in a day a snap!

So I finished getting my recipes together and I'm so pleased how the day went.  I followed the plan set up in the book and it was easy to follow.  I'm so glad that I now have 5 meals in my freezer!  It took me about 2 hours including cleanup to make these 5 meals except for the cook time of the slow cooker.  It was so fun to create all these meals at the same time. I'm really looking forward to using these meals for dinner soon!  I definitely will make a plan to make several meals in a day.

 Here are some pictures of my day: 

Setting up my stations: 

Finished Products:

Corkscrew Chicken; Porcupine Meatballs

Chicken and Dressing; Beefy Spanish Rice

Chicken Cacciatore

 

What I really liked:

*I liked having all the ingredients ready to go the day before, that is the KEY!!

*I liked using the different cooking methods all at the same time- slow cooker, oven, stovetop, assemble.  I think I can do this a few times a month and work up to adding more meals.

*Easy and yummy recipes from the book (I sampled all the ones I made!).



GIVEAWAY:  The authors of Dinner is Ready are pleased to offer my readers On The Side cookbook which is a great companion to Dinner is Ready as a giveaway.  If you order the book before the giveaway ends, and you win, you will get a credit of $20 toward anything you would like to purchase.

Special for my readers: FREE standard shipping ($4.95) with any shipped order.  If you order pans, shipping is a little more, but you still get a $4.95 discount.  Use Discount Code LUCKY.
Giveaway...In the comments tell me why you would like to make 30 meals in a day. Be sure to include your email address.  Don't forget to visit Dinner is Ready for more information about their great products.  Giveaway ends Wednesday, June 26.

*I was given this book as a complimentary copy from Dinner is Ready.  All opinions are my own.*