I am a Winner!

So last tuesday I opened my email to see this: "You were the randomly selected winner of the eBook A Month of Meals at Momma In Flip Flops2."

Sweet! I am a winner!

Sure, its not $5,000 a week for life, but everyone loves free stuff. Especially this. You see part of my latest scheme (you could call it a New Years Resolution, I suppose) is to actually cook dinner most every night, and to use my cookbooks. After all, what good are cookbooks if you don't use them.

So I spent many hours finding 26 recipes that I wanted to try and were pretty simple. Then I spent forever compiling all the ingredients into an ingredient list, and as we eat each meal, I write how well it went.

Oh man, This book could have saved me so much time! Not that I don't have plenty of time, but if I were crunched for time, this book would be awesome.

You see, in the book there are 26 meals with ingredient lists, weekly set up and even 6 of them are Freezer Meals. I read through the book and was rather surprised how long it really was. I even tested a recipe. There is even a best price guide, and healthy eating pyramid and more. So, I will get down to the nitty gritty.

The Good:
The Book contains main dish recipes, and sides suggestions. It also has a few freezer meals so that would even allow me to be lazier some days. And lets face it, people don't want to cook everyday. You get sick or have unexpected company and take them on a tour of town, or have a doc appointment. Lets face it, some days are just not convenient for cooking.

The Bad:
Well I tried the first recipe in the book. Potato soup. I won't say it was gross, in fact it was very yummy, but I didn't follow the recipe completely. Let me explain. The recipe called for 5 potatoes. After peeling and dicing 4 (smaller to medium) ones, I thought the pot was getting pretty full. So I only used 4. Then Icut up my onion. And because I had it in my fridge, and it wasn't going to be totally used up by my own monthly menu, I added a couple stalks celery diced and a handful of baby carrots. Then after adding 2 cups water, I knew that would not be enough to cover the potatoes, and therefore they would not get cooked properly, I put 4 cups in. (The recipe called for 2 c water and after boiling add 2 c milk. I wasn't sure what I would do when it came time to add milk, but I figured I could add powdered milk and it would be the same effect. So yeah, I finished making the soup and it was great. But I wasn't able to follow the recipe exactly which bothers me. If I were paying to buy this ebook, I would be expecting to follow the recipes exactly. Especially foods I am rather unfamiliar with. But that's me being picky.

The ugly:
Well, lets just say 2 typos in the first page. In the words of Danno "ebooks don't have publishers." Yes that's true. Also, I thought the 'lowest price" list wasn't the lowest price you can find. Like if $2.50 a pound was the best I could do on tomatoes, I wouldn't buy them. I would grow them, or just use canned. But, I am sure that things like produce are very dependant on market. Maybe its because I live in the middle of Kansas that I expect produce to be cheaper. Or maybe her prices are for organic.

Overall thoughts:
This is a reasonable buy if you are new to making menus, or not very familiar with groceries and food in general. I know some people that live on take out, and this would give them great savings. I have found plenty of information in it that I thought was useful, and well planned.

I would write more, but my head is sick of hearing the wails of someone wanting to be on my lap. Seriously, crying has become her new way of getting what she wants. And its not sad crying, its angry siren style crying.