Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook: Feasting with Your Slow Cooker (Paperback)

by Dawn J Ranck (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
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.

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Good Books (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561483176
• ISBN-13: 978-1561483174
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (220 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #14,968 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 69 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 (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Fix-it And Forget-it Cookbook (Plastic Comb)

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.

75 of 81 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 (Long Island, NY USA) - See all my reviews

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.

91 of 100 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 (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.