Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats--A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners (A 30-Minute Meal Cookbook)

I bought this book for my mom because she loves Rachel Ray. She also loves to cook, but often runs out of meal ideas-so this book came in handy. However, everyone has different tastes depending on where they live, so some of the recommended ingredients were substituted for other ingredients and/or taken out completely. When you cook, you know how to make a good meal-better. So this review is based on my mother's experience and her advice.

I really love Rachel Ray -- her bubbly and effervescent personality really does inspire one to get in the kitchen and cook away. However, this cookbook is probably not her best effort.

There's a marketing quotation which has been around for many years:

"Fast, quality, cheap -- pick any two of the three and we can probably do business."

Rachel's book focuses on "fast" in particular and the dishes aren't all that pricey as to their ingredients... but I'm compelled to say that the quality of these recipes, generally speaking, could be much better. I think that, herein, we see the result of a lot of "staff brain-storming" to get a new cookbook out on the market but not a lot of these recipes will withstand the test of time.

While I would gauge most of these recipes as "good," you could take half of them and find something similar, but better, at other sources. The other half are conceptually new and I give Rachel an "A" for creative thinking but, again, I feel that there are simply better innovative recipes to be found elsewhere.

Now, to be fair, a good number of these recipes will suffice for really busy career people who find themselves constantly on the run. My niece is just such a person and she doesn't have an abundance of time to spend behind her cooking range. She loves this cookbook and I think, for folks who share her circumstance in regard to time priorities, this work might just serve as a viable and valuable culinary reference. I see that used copies are available for about four bucks plus shipping so one could hardly get hurt at that price.

I will point out that this cookbook is nicely laid out and I found it easy to read as it sits open in my cookbook shield, (mine is on top of the fridge and I'm tall enough to get as close as I wish). So, the cookbook is particularly utilitarian in that regard.

Rachel Ray has a lot of irons in the fire and I'm looking forward to the day that she slows down a bit and endeavors to write a well-thought-out tome of solid recipes. I'm sure that she's quite capable of doing this. But for now I'll have to curtail my recommendation of this cookbook to the limited readership to whom I have already alluded: those folks who are notably on-the-run with little available time for meal preparation.

ok, so i'm not a fan of Rachael Ray however this cookbook really is great. Every recipe i've tried has been excellent. her other cookbooks arent that great. i've maybe found one or two things that i might make in them - not really worth purchasing. but this one is different. right off the bat i found 10 recipies i wanted to try and that was in the first 25 pages! great kid friendly meals, too. Try the Barbecue Sloppy Chicken Pan Pizza....you won't be disappointed!!!!

Rachael Ray's "365: No Repeats-A Year of Deliciously Different Meals" sounds like an interesting cookbook. A different dinner every night. In theory,it works. It sounds like a challenge for the Iron Chef kitchen. However, does the Perky One's challenge actually work?

There are mixed results. The recipes are categorized by master recipe (such as vegetarian) and then by number. There are hardly any pictures of the recipes. Many of the recipes are complicated and have numerous ingredients- not exactly helpful when people have tight budgets. There are some delicious recipes- Southwestern chicken pasta bake, rosemary corn cakes with proscuitto and chicken sausages, Scotch&wild mushroom risotto, as well as her Oregon-themed dinners: hash with wild mushrooms, greens, hazelnut, and blue cheese, and pork chops with pinot noir and cranberries. There are spicy shrimp and penne with puttanesca, and Fruitti di Mare and linguini. One has to dig for the good, useful, and economical recipes.

There are also some truly appalling recipes. The Boo-sotto is a risotto for dogs with garlic and onions. Unfortunately, garlic and onions are dangerous for canines. No wonder Ellen would be in tears for Iggy if he ate Rachael's cooking. The burly man-size chicken cheddar BBQ burgers with spicy slaw is best called a coronary on a plate. If you want your man's life insurance... The pumpkin polenta works in theory. The pretzel-crusted chicken breasts are gastroanomalies. The scramblewiches sound like good breakfast/brunch food. But no. There's hamburger and onion stuffed bread-ugh. The epitome of bad cooking is the hamburger salad. All it is are greasy hamburger patties with sliced cheese on them plopped upon bagged salad.

"365 No Repeats" isn't worth repeating. It's 365 days (or 366,in a leap year) of indigestion and constipation.

Immediately upon receiving I went through the entire cookbook and flagged recipes that looked good to me. Of the 366 options, I tagged well over 100 -- which I believe is exceptional. We've used two recipes so far and were very happy with them.