by Rosie Sykes, Zoe Heron and Polly Russell.

So I’ve been using this cookbook practically every day for the past two weeks. I’ve just started week three. I’m enjoying it, and I can see myself using this for the full year around. I’ve never had such good food on a constant basis before. I’m not sure, however, if the book lives up to what it promises in the title.

I don’t usually use cookbooks. The most I had used previously really was printing out random recipes off the Internet or using ‘Cooking Guide’ on my DS. Both things were adequate for me to learn the basics and to realise that I really liked cooking and that I wanted to do it more. I wasn’t happy, however, with going out to the shops whenever I wanted to make some food and having to spend loads to buy all the strange ingredients needed to make just one nice meal. It was also an annoyance having to find something nice to cook every evening.

That’s why I was attracted to this book. Actually, I guess its nicely designed cover was the first reason I opened it. But the idea of giving me a shopping list to use every week to make a meal for every night was a brilliantly simple idea and I was surprised it has taken this long to come about. The meals looked interesting and well balanced, and there were all sorts of ideas that I hadn’t tried before or had foods I was unsure of cooked in different ways that I was willing to give a taste again. I liked the idea of reusing leftovers too. I liked the idea of spending less and having better foods.

The book is called ‘A Year of Time-and-money-saving Recipes’. Let’s take a look at that.

A Year.

The book is broken down into weeks, four weeks per month. Each month has an introduction to the month and a summary table of all the meals, each week has an introduction to the meals, a summary and a shopping list. This is all nicely explained and easily laid out. There are four desserts to make per month.The recipies per week are spread out on the pages; the book is fairly thick.  The only problem I have with this is that there are not four weeks in every month. Four weeks for twelve months is only 48 weeks. Since the week’s recipies are decently seasonal and use fresh veg available for the time of the year, there are going to have to be four weeks in the year where I’m eating a weeks worth of food that I’ve already had that month. It irritates me slightly that a whole ‘month’s’ worth of food is missing, and that the book advertises to cover an entire year of my life with delicious varied meals.

Time saving.

I would probably say that i’ve not saved time really, but that’s because I previously don’t think I spent enough time in the kitchen to begin with. I’m glad I’m in there more often. The meals take enough time to make that I can make all sorts of wonderful foods, but they’re quick enough so I don’t get bored by being slaved over a stove for too long. Sometimes I have Matt to help me and I’m grateful for that because sometimes I have to juggle quite a few things at once and having an extra pair of hands means I don’t burn things.

Money saving.

This has been a struggle for me to get my head around because going to the supermarket each week has cost me about £70-£100 for everything. That’s three weeks worth of food for ~£300. That’s a lot for two people. The recipies are for four people and everything on the shopping list is easily halved in quantity, but a lot of things are bought in sizes for four people, so we end up spending more because we’re only a twosome. But this also means that with this book buying for four wouldn’t really double the cost from what I’m paying. We got to the local markets for fresh produce and meat, then to Sainsbury’s to buy the rest. I think in time the weekly cost will decline, because I’ve had to buy quite a few expensive cupboard items like special vinegars and a lot of herbs and spices. Obviously these will last a while, so I don’t have to buy them every week. Hopefully the weekly cost will come down to £50-£60, which is cheaper than what we were previously doing.
Previously, I’d set a budget of about 35 a week to spend on Sainsbury’s online. I’d not really know what to spend it on though, so I bought a lot of packet casserole dish mixes, pasta sauces in jars, rice, a lot of chicken, and when I learned that I liked it, salmon. About half way through the week we’d need milk or bread and so Matt, on his way home from work, would stop off at the local Co-Op and spend about £20-£30 on junk and sometimes food for the night, like maybe a pizza or frozen food to be cooked in the oven. Doing that a few nights a week plus the fairly frequent times we’d eat out or get a takeaway means that the total weekly must have hit about £100 anyway.
Spending that amount all at once at a supermarket is daunting. Buying a beef sirloin, or lamb neck fillet, or two whole chickens each costs about £13. Do I think it’s worth it?

This book has recipes.

In the first week of getting the book, I had decided to try July, week 3, since that is what week we were currently in. The book asked for a chunk of beef sirloin, which is something I’d never ate before. I didn’t go to my local butchers because frankly I would have felt stupid asking for it, so I bought it from Tescos. I got scared of the price and how gross it looked but I bought it anyway.
The meat was topped with a mustard and pepper ‘crust’ and cooked in the oven. I cooked it medium rare by accident; I used to hate red meats and so I usually have mine well done when I do eat beef. However, it smelt amazing. Red juice ran out of it when Matt cut it into slices, but I was actually excited. It was the juiciest meat I’ve ever tasted; it was wonderful.
I’ve learned from the book that spices and marinades and juices and fresh herbs are what makes food special and interesting. My cupboard is so full of little pots of various smelly powders that I’ve been accumulating of the past three weeks. I’ve got two pots of fresh herbs sitting on my windowsill. It makes such a difference to add all these things. The recipes in the book are full of ways to use them. Salad is a fairly big thing; leftovers from the main meal of the week are often turned into an interesting, huge and tasty salad, and each salad has had a different dressing and all dressings have been made from scratch. No Thousand Island for me.
My favourite meal so far has been kebabs that I marinated overnight. The marinade was made up of a strange mix of spices that included cinnamon and cumin. I used lamb neck fillet. it all smelt amazing before I cooked it, and grilling it the next day. I’ve never tasted meat so full of different flavours before. There are some of those in the freezer waiting to be made next week; if the good weather continues I might BBQ them.

One curious annoyance with the book is how full it is of spelling mistakes and other general errors. I’ve seen ‘Eggs’ as ‘Wggs’, for example. I’ve only read through three weeks worth of the book and there are around 10 mistakes there that should have been picked up during editing. The whole thing seems rather sloppily edited. I’ve been told to chop up an ingredient twice. Surely this is a serious problem and one that should be solved with the Second Edition?

If you pick up this book;

Be ready to do one big weekly shop, have room in your cupboards for loads of interesting herbs and spices, have a set of measuring spoons, be prepared to eat a lot of lettuce and a lot of olive oil. Note the book does not have calories per meal which I would have found helpful. Read the whole recipe before starting; some of the instructions are a bit confusing.

Overall.

The book is definitely worth not just picking up and trying out, but sticking to and using daily. It can really be used to plan everything you eat. The food is amazing. Really, really amazing. I can see myself not wanting to go out for a restaurant meal for a while. There are issues though, like all the spelling mistakes, and things I’d like to see, like a full year’s worth of recipes and calorie counts.