[knight17]

Thank you for mentioning it. It is a useful way to organise a book for busy people who wants to cook. I found this aspect of the book interesting and searched for some reviews and found this critique of its ingredient list; that it is expensive:

>>> ... seem unaware of their privilege ... ask you to buy near industrial quantities of certain expensive ingredients. Worse, there’s often no suggestion as to alternatives if the budget cannot quite stretch to a kilo of black raspberries ... painfully unconscious of this element to their book ... an expressly upper middle class lifestyle cookbook. [] <<<

I usually discount criticisms of privilige but in this case of a cookbook it seems to be synonymous with expensive.

[] http://cookthesebooks.com/a-new-way-to-dinner-amanda-hesser-...

Anyone know of other books or resources along similar lines?

[amb23]

I haven’t found the ingredients to be too expensive for most of the menus honestly, but I also live by a really cheap fruit and veggie store. (A kilo of blackberries isn’t gonna break the budget when it’s $1.00 a carton.) The book’s recipes are sized for a family of four hence the huge portions; I’m single so I usually cut the recipes in half and save a lot for leftovers. I’d say there’s a lot of substitutes you can make in the book for rare/pricier items and it’s realistic for most middle class budgets. They also group menus by season, so you buy the ingredients for the week when the produce is at its cheapest. But yeah, they do have the occasional ingredient like ground lamb or garlic scapes that can make the menus annoying/expensive to put together exactly.