Jul 06 2008
“Cheap. Fast. Good!” by Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross
I picked up Cheap. Fast. Good! by Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross after I reviewed Desperation Dinners because I wanted to see if I would like the food better in Cheap. Fast. Good!.
As I said in Desperation Dinners, the cooking duo were able to whip up a meal in 20 minutes because they were using a lot of convenience foods. Those tend to be expensive, so I would end up cooking the food the old-fashioned way, which of course takes a lot longer, and defeats the whole dinner-in-20-minutes idea. 
Enter Cheap. Fast. Good!.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. The food is more “normal” in this one, although there were still quite a few “out there” recipes. Flipping through the pages, I bookmarked quite a few recipes as being possibilities for dinner, more than I did in Desperation Dinners.
I think I also enjoyed it because there were a lot of tips on how to cook more frugally, something I like to read about. It was kind of a cross between a how-to-be-frugal book and a recipe book, with the heavy emphasis on recipes of course.
Each recipe has an approximate cooking time but unlike Desperation, the emphasis isn’t on beating the clock but cooking cheaply. That’s more what I care about, so to me, this book was more usable.
One thing that I enjoyed in both books were the comments in the sidebars on each recipe - how it came into being, what they liked about it, etc. The writing style is approachable, as if you’re sitting down to chat with old friends when you flip the book open.
Overall, I would give Cheap. Fast. Good! 4.5 out of 5 stars, and will probably buy it for my own collection. Any of my readers a fan of the cookbooks? I would love to hear your thoughts on the recipes - too weird or perfectly normal? Chime in on the comment section.
Hava
