Deborah Taylor-Hough

Frozen Assets isn't so much a cookbook as a method and a philosophy. It's aimed at people with slim budgets and/or a lack of time on their hands. Although it isn't the only use for this cookbook, the basic theory is called "once a month cooking" (or OAMC). The idea is that you plan your meals for a month, then spend one full day cooking a bunch of freezable main dishes. Then, for the rest of the month, you have only to thaw things, make a few side dishes, and eat.

This isn't nearly as show more difficult or outlandish as it sounds. Deborah achieves this largely by creating several very adaptable meal components - such as a ground meat mix and a spaghetti sauce - that can be combined and re-combined in a number of ways to make a delicious variety of dishes. She also has a wide range of hints to help you fit this bounty into your little refrigerator freezer (although having a full-size freezer wouldn't hurt).

I admit, I didn't expect to love the food in this cookbook. It's simple stuff, and often uses simple inexpensive ingredients - which in some people's hands can lead to some truly awful food. But in this author's hands it leads to delicious meals! The baked ziti is one of our favorites. It makes a full 13×9-inch pan full of ziti with sauce and a small amount of meat and cheese - plus enough for two frozen batches of the same size. The lentils ranchero primarily consists of lentil (with a small amount of ground meat, lots of ketchup, and some onion soup mix) - but somehow it comes out tasting like it's all yummy hamburger! (It's black magic, I'm telling you.)

One of our complaints about this cookbook won't apply to everyone and is easy to fix - many of these recipes are most definitely not diet food (the author has young, growing children, after all!). However, this is offset by the fact that these recipes are incredibly easy to adapt. Want to reduce the calories of the ziti? Substitute broccoli for some of the pasta and use less cheese. Want to reduce the fattiness of the wonderful breakfast casserole? Add an extra apple, use Egg Beaters instead of eggs, and take out half of the sausage. These are remarkably flexible recipes, and their simplicity lends itself very well to adaptation of almost any kind.

Because of the format (meal plans including recipes), a number of recipes get repeated in several places. I would have preferred to have that space taken up by more recipes. There are a couple of minor snafus here and there - a recipe or two that list an ingredient in the ingredient list and then forget to mention it in the preparation instructions, things like that. But again, since the recipes are so simple it's usually pretty easy to figure out what to do.

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One of the major innovations in Deborah’s new book is the “mini-session.” Her last book, as I recall, presented a seven-day menu, as well as a 30-day (and a few other things). Apparently not everyone wanted to deal with cooking for a whole month at once, so this book presents the mini-session: roughly 5 to 8 recipes all involving one central ingredient. You wait until that ingredient is on sale in bulk, buy a lot of it, and do one brief session. Stash some of the meals in the freezer, show more then do a different mini-session a little while later and stash a few more things away.

If you still want to cook for a month at once, you just do several mini-sessions at one time. Note that because of this new format, she does not repeat any recipes within this book (unlike the last one, where the repetition of recipes did waste some space).

Deborah also provides tips and hints for turning your own recipes into freezer meals or putting together your own mini-sessions. Each mini-session includes a shopping list and preparation instructions. And of course, as before, each recipe is simple and easy, and provides quick prep instructions for when you take it out of the freezer. The recipe layout is clean and easy to follow.

As the title of the book implies, these are, in general, healthier recipes than those in her last book. They include more vegetables. There’s an emphasis on lighter fare: chicken and turkey instead of beef, and even beans and vegetarian recipes. Each recipe says it makes 6 servings. Note that if you’re on a diet that emphasizes portion control, they make more like 9 to 10 servings (in our experience). Most of the nutritional information is included (calories, fat, protein, carbohydrates, cholesterol); unfortunately fiber is not included, to the sorrow of Weight Watchers members counting POINTS.

Our overall judgment is that these recipes are a bit more bland than her others, but definitely good. Bland is a minus for me, but I know it’s a plus for many people. So the recipes are quite good, but if you like flavorful food you may want to experiment with them a bit.

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Family cooking for the freezer - ideas and method as much as recipes. The precise instructions are not to everyone's taste - cans of soup or pasta sauce - but the concept is great. If you can face the mammoth cook-in, the rewards are tremendous : a domestic godess glow with a freezer full of meals for when kids need feeding and school, work, sports, music lessons, Guides and Scouts, and general maternal overload might mean that cooking from scratch night after night might just not happen. To show more find more about this American author, see her website at http://thesimplemom.com where she talks about food, frugality, home schooling, etc. You'll find her inspiring or exhausting - I haven't decided which yet, but lots of ideas for home, kitchen and family. show less

If you need more time during the week or prepare meals for others, this book may well work for you. Prepare meals in advance and freeze. Use containers that fit your family size! I've tried these recipes and they are pretty tasty. Once familiar with the method, add in your own recipes. This is family fare, not haute cuisine. I actually have the 1999 version.