Everyday Food: Great Food Fast

I huffed a little haughtily at buying a Martha Stewart book and again when I saw the simple recipes. "How can it really be that good with so few ingredients?" I thought. At that time, I'd been teetering between complex international recipes and my 3-ingredient slow cooker recipes.

This book is amazing in its simplicity. If you use all fresh ingredients, you won't be disappointed. The tortilla chicken soup, tortilla pie, roasted chicken and squash, and baked ravioli are among my favorites. I consider myself an intermediate cook (those complex recipes were challenging and the 3-ingredient recipes were a bore), and these recipes are a perfect difficulty level. I can pick these recipes out and be confident that they are going to be great.

My husband actually commented that my cooking skills were improving, but I'm actually just using this book more consistently!

I really like this cookbook. Within the first week of getting it I made two recipes from it. The recipes are simple but delicious and there is a section with basic tips and recipes.

Good cook book, using for the most part everyday ingredients. Easy meals out of the mundane, book arrive on time as described

I subscribed to "Everyday Food" magazine when it first came out, and found the recipes to be original, fresh-tasting, and generally quick to prepare. The only problem with my growing stack of the little magazines was that I couldn't reliably find my favorite recipes. This cookbook distills down those first few years of the magazine to the very best recipes, and organizes them by season.

The photography is beautiful, as one would expect from Marfa, but this isn't just eye candy. They must have tested the recipes very thoroughly because I've yet to find a dud in the mix. The other thing I appreciate is that for the most part, this isn't a bunch of frou-frou gourmet kewsine that my kids refuse to touch. They use fresh, generally down-to-earth ingredients, and the results are healthful and delicious.

A winner all the way around!

This is hands-down my favorite cookbook. The recipes are clear and always turn out well. The results are always much more impressive than one would imagine, given that most of them can be made in about half an hour. To me, this is the mark of a great cookbook.

The organization of the recipes by season is also a wonderful idea. It encourages readers to use seasonal ingredients, which means that simple recipes with fresh ingredients can be made to taste great without lots of extra work or artificial flavors.

Wonderful!