Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook: Feasting with Your Slow Cooker [Paperback]

Dawn J Ranck (Author), Phyllis Pellman Good (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2001

Who's hungry? EVERYONE. Who has time to cook? NO ONE.

Dig out the slow cooker. Add a second and a third if you wish. Fill one with main-dish fixins and the others with go-alongs. Do it in the morning--or between work and after-school events.

Come home to richly-flavored, ready-to-serve food.

Slow cookers are having a comeback. With good reason. They are friends on a day of running errands. They allow easy entertaining with no last-minute preparation. And vegetarians won't find a better way to work with dried beans.

Slow cookers are gentle with the food budget--less expensive ingredients flourish in their slow, moist heat.

Fix-It and Forget-It offers the range of recipes slow cookers do well: Appetizers and Snacks, Soups and Stews, Main Dishes (with and without meat), Vegetables and Go-Alongs, Desserts and Beverages.

Bring an element of simplicity--and quality--to your pressured life! Let your slow cooker work for you.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Slow cookers are having a comeback. With good reason. They are friends on a day of running errands. They allow easy entertaining with no last-minute preparation. They are miracles for potluck meals, whether in your home or someone else's. And vegetarians won't find a better way to work with dried beans.

Slow cookers are gentle with the food budget--less expensive ingredients flourish in their slow, moist heat.

Fix-It and Forget-It offers more than 800 recipes--the whole range of recipes slow cookers do well. Tips and Hints are dropped in throughout, urging one additional small step for lots of extra flavor, offering ways to make your cooker a complementary appliance, explaining seasoning to maximum effect.

Bring an element of simplicity--and quality--to your pressured life! Let your slow cooker work for you.

About the Author

Dawn J. Ranck has been a convinced slow-cooker user for years. She, along with her many friends, have been lining up their various-sized cookers on their kitchen counters before they set off each morning--and coming home to richly flavored full dinners.

Ranck , who lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia, is the co-author of A Quilter's Christmas Cookbook and Favorite Recipes with Herbs.

Phyllis Pellman Good has been part of many cookbook projects, authoring The Best of Amish Cooking and The Festival Cookbook, and co-authoring Recipes from Central Market, Favorite Recipes with Herbs, The Best of Mennonite Fellowship Meals, and From Amish and Mennonite Kitchens.

Good and her husband, Merle, live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and are co-directors of The People's Place, a heritage interpretation center in the Lancaster County village of Intercourse, Pennsylvania.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Good Books (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561483176
• ISBN-13: 978-1561483174
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (357 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #99,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

136 of 139 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not exactly haute cuisine, but has a lot of useful recipes February 1, 2002

By Douglas A. Greenberg VINE™ VOICE

Format:Spiral-bound

Yes, crock pots, once considered a kind of quaint relic of the seventies, are making a comeback. And why not? The basic idea is that you take a bunch of ingredients, throw them into the crock pot in the morning, and by dinnertime, voila--you have something hot, fragrant, and tasty. And what's more, a lot of the foods cooked this way taste even better as leftovers.

The strength of this cookbook is in the sheer volume of recipes provided, and in their overall simplicity. These truly are "fix it and forget it" types of dishes, including a lot of soups, chiles, and simple stews. Surely out of the 800+ recipes here anyone who purchases this book will find enough winners to make it a worthwhile buy.

Potential buyers should be forewarned, however, that this is by no means *haute cuisine*. Lots of the recipes include generous glops of canned creamed soups, dry soup mixes, canned vegetables, "American" cheese, and other gastronomical abominations. The point is, however, that there are so many recipes included that it's easy to skip over those and go on to ones that appear more promising.

The bottom line is that during the short time that I have owned this book, it has proven itself incredibly valuable and useful. My wife and my family are very glad that I picked it up, and that I brought the ol' crock pot out of its previously semi-retired state.

64 of 65 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Nutritious Meals for Busy People October 20, 2001

By "seajourner"

Format:Paperback

We hate to cook, but restaurants, take-out and frozen foods have lost their appeal for my husband and me in our last 6 years as empty-nesters. Our new larger crock-pot and THIS book have been the answer! Since the larger cookers are far superior to their ancestors of the 70's, we were looking for interesting recipes that stretched beyond the lentil soup recipes of the older crock-pot cookbooks. On the other hand, we didn't want to have to make a special trip to the international market for exotic ingredients each time either. Lemon roasted chicken, beef burgundy, and the tenderest ribs ever are just a few of the great meals we've had from this collection. While some of the old crock-pot stand-bys are included: baked beans, chili, lentil soup, and one pot meals made with cream of mushroom soup and cheese, there are many newer and creative recipes that serve their purpose - easy to prepare with common home kitchen ingredients, ready when you get home for dinner, and delicious.

116 of 126 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must for Your Cookbook Collection September 1, 2001

By Deborah A. Woehr VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I've compared this cookbook with Betty Crocker, Sunset, Hoffman, etc. In my opinion, it beats all of them. Fix It and Forget it is a collection of recipes from people all over the country. There are twenty different chili recipes to choose from, as well as appetizers, desserts, main dishes, and soups. The book is divided in these categories, listing several recipes per page. Each recipe is very simple to follow. So far, I've tried the Saucy Pork Chops and the Creamy Chicken Italiano. The pork chops were excellent, and I'm not a big pork lover. The Chicken Italiano was a step up from the Chicken Helper you can get in the supermarket. If I make this again, I'd put more spices in it. If you don't like a lot of spice in your food, then you'll enjoy this dish.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who has a crock pot and anyone who doesn't. Some of these recipes, like the pork chops, you can cook on the stovetop. There's something for everyone in this book.

161 of 178 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars AWFUL -- UNLESS YOU'RE TRYING TO GET SICK OR FAT February 25, 2006

By Jessica

Format:Paperback

I bought this book after reading some online reviews and have never been so disappointed in a cookbook. Just about every recipe includes high-sodium, high-fat, junky canned and/or processed food ingredients such as cream of mushroom soup. I simply don't eat that way and wasn't about to start just so that I could use my new slow-cooker. In all fairness, many crockpot cookbooks use these ingredients, I've learned, but this one doesn't even seem to have been put together by an expert. It appears to be a compilation of solicited reader submissions and reminds me very much of a community potluck fundraising cookbook. For instance, there are several recipes titled 'pot roast,' each submitted by a different person and no pictures, not that pictures would have changed my opinion of this book. When I purchase a cookbook, I'm trusting the author to have created or at least tried the recipes in the book and to present the best one. Not the case here. I returned the book and went to a local bookstore, and sat there with a bunch of cookbooks, reading through each to determine which one to buy. By the way, "Fix it and foget it lightly" wasn't any better. My selection was 'Not your mother's slow cooker cookbook," which presents recipes using only healthy ingredients that I would actually eat.

60 of 64 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Majority of recipes not healthy (but some are), repetitive February 12, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Spiral-bound|Amazon Verified Purchase

I bought this book and I am not sure I would again. There are about 800 recipes in the book. There are 4 major drawbacks to this book. First -- A vast number of them do contain a LOT of cheese and fats (1 to 3 cups per recipe) and preprepared soups and soup mixes. Definitely not the healthy meals I try to prepare. Second -- There are multiple variations of the same recipe. How many times can you vary beef stew and beef vegetable soup and still call it a different recipe? This book does it about 50 times. Third -- the table of contents isn't detailed enough. You have to sift through 200 main dish recipes at a time. It would have been nice if there was some grouping such as 'beef main dishes, chicken main dishes, vegetarian main dises' etc. Fouth -- It could use a better overview section on the principles of slow cooking to cover such things as safety, keeping the crockpot at least 1/2 full, etc. Having said that I did go through and highlight the recipes that I would cook -- reasonble in fat and salt content. I found that there were only about 10% (excluding the repetitive ones) that I would use. Because of the 800 recipes to start with this still leaves me about 80. I tend to think of the value of a cookbook in how many recipes I get for the value. So this one ended up being 80 recipes for the cost of the book. That's not unreasonable.