Sarah Kallio

I wish I was a friend of the author, so I could afford give a copy of this to every young family I know. But my five-star rating is all my own.

This is the way I've been cooking for 30 years, only better. Have a reasonably extensive, but very versatile, mostly not-readily-perishable, standard list, and make your recipes and 'put-togethers' from what you always have.

These recipes are mostly wholesome, using lots of 'real' food (not a lot of prepared), and are easily adaptable to personal tastes. They can also be adapted to make them a little different each time.

Despite the fact that I've been cooking much like this for decades, I did mark almost 2 dozen distinct recipes, and have even tried one already - the Chicken w/ Pears and Feta bake. Correction, they recommend blue cheese. Well, I already had feta on hand, so I used that - turns out it was a bit too mild and blue or Gorgonzola would have worked better.

There were 3 whole sections I'm going to use extensively - I'm going to make my own dressings and marinades now, using their ideas. And my own flavored rices, instead of being a sucker for the boxes of mix. I never realized those kinds of things could be so easy - and homemade won't have half the salt which is good for me as I'm vulnerable to edema.

The third section I love is the roll-up breads. The authors include frozen bread dough as a staple, and they love to thaw it, stretch it out to 9x11, sprinkle stuff on it, then roll it up, let it rise, bake, and slice. I like the idea of the 'cheesy ranch' one, and of course my family will be thrilled when I make the cinnamon raisin one. Of course, I have flour and yeast in my pantry, so I'll make my own dough. And as soon as I'm comfortable with the idea, I'll come up with my own variations - given the variety of recipes given, I'm sure I can figure out how to do, say, one with ginger and cream cheese....

If you've been cooking happily for a while, and do eat most of your meals at home, you may not get much out of this book. Alternatively, you may do as I am doing, and just adapt their plans. If you have found yourself ordering pizza or serving spaghetti way too often, I highly recommend using your next long weekend to take the list* to the grocery store and stock your pantry, freezer, and refrigerator and start cooking with and for your family.

*handy tear out copies included, or printable from their website at www.thestockedkitchen.com

… (mere)

Disclaimer: my agent gave me a complimentary copy of this book. It was my decision to review it though.

I'm not much of a cook. It's not something I particularly enjoy doing, and usually will opt for putting a frozen pizza in the oven or making some Hamburger Helper. I just don't have a whole lot of time to plan and cook meals. There are a few from-scratch things I do make, like burritos and spaghetti, but that's about it. In general, I find cooking takes a lot of time and I often don't have the stuff needed to make anything different from my normal meals. And my cupboards are loaded with spices I used only once and never again (in fact I had spices in my cupboard from before we bought our house, which was eleven years ago). Needless to say, I'm not all that enthusiastic about cooking and would rather go out to eat any day of the week.

In steps The Stocked Kitchen, and in all seriousness, it's changed my perspective on cooking. Good meals don't have to take hours to prepare, and even my kids are eating it. They're notoriously picky eaters--and there's still stuff they won't eat--but to my surprise I'm hearing a lot more "Wow! This is really good!" rather than "I'm not eating that!" But my husband is the most thrilled to be eating more home-cooked meals and spending less going out to dinner. We haven't made a meal yet out of this book that he doesn't like.

The selling point for me about this cookbook is undoubtedly the shopping list. If you have everything on the shopping list, you can make anything in the book. It does take a couple attempts to figure out what you will use most often and so what to stock up on, but once you figure that out, it's easy to keep what's needed on-hand. There's also stuff that you won't use as often depending on what appeals to you, and this can mean having to throw away some fresh produce until you figure it out (I ended up wasting my fresh basil because none of the recipes I made the first week used it). It might be helpful to set out a meal plan for the week ahead of time, to avoid wasting on the fresh produce. Pretty much everything else on the list will keep a good long time before you open it and use it.

I would really give this book 4 and 1/2 stars, because it's not perfect, but it's darn near close. I live in a high altitude state, which means more cooking time and more liquids, but there's no high altitude directions included, which means I'll have to experiment to get some recipes right (the stroganov came out quite dry but still tasty). There's also no quick reference to prep time. You have to read the actual recipe to see how long it will take to make, and in one case I didn't see the mention of marinading time and so that set back dinner by an hour. I know now to read the recipes carefully before hand, but a quick prep-time reference at the top, like in some of my other cookbooks, would have been most helpful.

I think this book will be particularly good come the holidays, when we have to bring dishes to the family get-togethers. I get tired of making the same green bean casserole or fruit salad every time, so I'm looking forward to trying out some of the dip and pasta salad recipes. Already I've worn a crease in the middle of the book from using it, and hopefully it won't start falling apart (a spiral-bound version would be fantastic).… (mere)

I love cooking a good meal; however, I get frustrated when, having just cooked something spectacular, I'm left with a half jar of one ingredient (that you just had to have to make that a truly memorable meal) sitting in my fridge door until it's nothing more than a moldy science experiment. This book seems to have tackled those "lonely soldiers" of leftover jars in the fridge door right where they stand. Using only 140 ingredients that you probably already have on hand, The Well Stocked Kitchen (TM) provides 300 recipes you can cook at the drop of a hat for almost any situation. I'm looking forward to digging in, trying this approach & adapting to my needs. No more "lonely soldiers" in the fridge door at my house!… (mere)