Who doesn't want to save a few bucks on dinner, right? Add to this the promise of simple and family-friendly meals for both weeknights and weekends, and this new cookbook from Food Network star Melissa d'Arabian might just find a permanent spot on the kitchen shelf.
Quick Facts
• Who wrote it: Melissa d'Arabian
• Who published it: Clarkson Potter
• Number of recipes: 140 recipes, covering snacks and appetizers, soups, salads, meat and vegetarian main dishes, desserts, and breakfast.
• Recipes for right now: Slow Cooker Tortilla Soup, Cod in Garlic-Ginger Broth, Everyday Roast Beef, Veggie Moussaka, Crisper Drawer Pasta, and Peanut Butter Chocolate Lava Sundaes
• Other highlights: Lots of emphasis on family-friendly dinners here with a good mix of quick n' easy weeknight meals and longer-cooking dishes for the weekend. The tips for trimming food budget dollars and stretching meals are genuinely useful and worth paying attention to! (A few favorites: "Buy small as well as big at bulk bins," "10 Ideas for Leftover Chicken," and "Freezing and Substituting Fresh Herbs.")
I do have one quibble with the book: with so much emphasis on dinners that are $10 or less, I don't think the book does a great job of actually estimating the cost per recipe. Each recipe has a rating of 1 to 5 dots that are meant to indicate the relative expense of the meal, but this feels far too subtle and general to me. (Do five dots equal a $10 meal?) I understand that food prices vary based on where we live and the specific ingredients we choose to buy, but I really would have appreciated at least an estimate. The dot system is somewhat explained in the introduction, but the matrix for figuring out actual at-home meal cost still feels very complicated and nonintuitive to me.
This aside, I do think this is a solid cookbook with a good collection of truly useful and tasty-sounding recipes. The fact that so many of them are family-friendly is bonus points for anyone trying to please both young eaters and adults at the same table.
• Who would enjoy this book? Family cooks, college students on a budget and other budget-conscious cooks
Find the book at your local library, independent bookstore, or Amazon: Ten Dollar Dinners: 140 Recipes and Tips to Elevate Simple, Fresh Meals Any Night of the Week by Melissa d'Arabian
(Images: Emma Christensen)
5 Things Paris Taught Me About Travel
Recipe: Ham, Cheddar & Chive Egg Bakes
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Bacsac Bacsquare 04...
Apartment Therapy's Sofa Shopping Guide
Nikki’s Sweet and Cheery Print Studio
Ahh Mommy McBacon has a cookbook. (That's her nickname over at FoodNetworkHumor)
You know, I can't hate too much on her but I really don't feel like it's the format that she wants to do. Many of the foods she makes it seems like she doesn't even like herself. I think Food Network figured "Hmm, people want to eat cheap; let's throw the "reality" show winner into another crappy Bobby Flay produced show but this one will be about cheap foods that no one will eat.
I love thekitchn, but I have to say I'm disappointed in the cookbook reviews on this site. I wish you would try out a few of the recipes and comment on whether the directions are clear, the cook-times seem to be on target, the yield is accurate, the portions are appropriate, etc - not full-on recipe reviews, but it would definitely be helpful to know whether or not, in general, the reviewer had success in actually using the book, and whether or not the book's recipes accurately reflect actual results.
Cookbooks aren't just for reading - they're for using, for a specific purpose. While the ease of reading, analysis of the format, and a description of the topics covered is useful to know, I think the tastiness of the food and the experience of following the recipes is much more important.
Totally agree with Margaret_M. "The concept is interesting and the pictures are pretty," and similarly shallow comments, are things I could determine myself in 30 seconds; that's not what I'm looking for in a cookbook review.
Right! That's why this is NOT a cookbook review - we don't SAY IT IS anywhere. It's just a quickie profile of a "new cookbook." When we can, we do full reviews, but they are very time-consuming and resource-intensive. When a book has been fully reviewed, with recipes tested, etc. it will be marked as such. But we think there's also value in quick profiles, with some shots highlighting what each book has to offer.
It would be useful to have commenters note when they would like more in-depth reviews - we'll do our best to oblige when lots of people say they would like us to take another look.
Thanks for the reply, Faith. One of the "Categories" listed at the end of the post is "Cookbook Review", which is why I received it as such. Perhaps it was mislabeled.