Authors: Lara Starr and Lynette Shirk
ISBN: 978-1-57344-363-0

Click Here To Purchase The Frugal Foodie Cookbook: Waste-Not Recipes for the Wise Cook

A small book like this, at 6.9” x 6”, will be lost on many a cookbook shelf. However, there are plenty of reasons to keep this one on the counter and handy. Printed in the style of the “Dummy” series books, there are tips, hints and quotes interspersed throughout this delightful collection of recipes and more.

Starr and Shirk have found and included many recipes that most cooks will be looking for at times when running short of specific supplies or ingredients. From the “3-in-1 Eye-Opening Mix” (pg. 18) through “Best Dressed Salads” with a chart to show how to mix herbs together (pg. 62) and to “Cents-able Solutions: Savvy Substitutions” (pg. 114, 115) with a chart showing common substitutes for things that might not be in the pantry. There are recipes of all qualities and styles where the gourmet can vary ingredients for that special taste or the rushed mom can have things already prepared for immediate serving up for dinner.

There are tips in marquee boxes like “Processor Points” delineating how to clean the blade and how to really clean the compartments. There are “Cents-able Solutions” like the one mentioned above in a different style of marquee box.  Interspersed throughout are short quotes from famous and infamous persons. Zsa-Zsa Gabor – “I’m a marvelous housekeeper, every time I have a man, I keep his house.”  To by M.F.K. Fisher –   “Almost every person has something secret he likes to eat”.

The recipes are good and easy to follow. The ingredients are listed first so the pantry can be checked before starting. However there is no index or cross reference to help find something specific.  Even the chapters and entries in the table of contents do not provide any type of sorting, just titles of the sections are referenced there.

This book will help anyone trying to save money by trying to use what is already in the pantry. The recipes are simple enough to follow and there are tables and charts throughout to help with substitutions and changes. However, this is not the book for someone who already does this on a regular basis.  With the odd size of the book, the missing index and references to items in it, and the odd and limited table of contents it could becomes harder to use than others that are available.