Great cookbook! I found several things I will be cooking in the near future. I am always on the hunt for, it is a recipe that is quick, delicious, and simple to make. This book had several. I usually read my cookbooks like a novel, cover to cover this was no different. I learned a lot from this book

A perfect cookbook for busy cooks, The Dinner Plan, addresses five problem areas in getting weeknight dinners on the table: Make-Ahead, Staggered, One-Dish, Pantry, and Extra-Fast. Along with excellent recipes that real people actually will want to make, The Dinner Plan is filled with time-saving hints and helps to improve every busy person’s experience when preparing dinner.

The recipes contained in this book are unique – none of the same-old, same-old mainstays that tend to be mundane and boring. Although the recipes have influences from all over the world (Mexico, Middle East, Cuba, etc.), the emphasis seems to be Asian, and there are easy versions of popular Asian recipes that are must-try. Who doesn’t like Summer Rolls? They have deconstructed these delicious morsels and made them into a delicious salad. There is an incredible recipe for Curried Coconut Noodle Soup (Thai chicken noodle soup), and several quick, easy stir-fry dishes.

The book also includes some incredible salads and side dishes. The Spicy Cucumber Sticks are easy and crunchy, and the Jicama with Red Onions, Oranges, and Cilantro is light, flavorful and delicious. Bok Choy with Oyster Sauce is both yummy and healthy, and the Chickpea and Kale salad is good and trendy.

All said, The Dinner Plan is a “Must-Own” cookbook for everyone who is busy. It’s perfect for those who prefer not to cook, because the recipes are quick and easy. It’s perfect for those who love to cook, because there is such a variety of great, mouthwatering recipes. Every time I pull this book out, I add more recipes to my queue. I also plan to include a copy of this book in my adult children’s Christmas packages this year because there are so many excellent options that I know their families will enjoy. Rarely does a cookbook come along that is this good; almost everyone will enjoy this cookbook.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

lovely and beautifully illustrated cookbook for those who like to be (mostly) organised. The recipes fall into different categories such as 'make ahead', 'pantry', 'staggered'(for when various family members eat at different times), 'one dish' and 'extra fast'. Thus you can choose which type of preparation works best for your household and lifestyle. It's very well designed, with lots of tips and notes. I've tried only a few of the recipes so far, but have bookmarked quite a few to work my way through. Only a couple of (small) negatives, the first being that there are very few dessert recipes, and the second that the brand-name recommendations only work for the authors' native US market, being meaningless to those of us in other countries.

Review of an advance copy from the publisher.

Awesome story. Can’t wait to read more from this author!!!

The Dinner Plan by Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion offers a variety of Simple Weeknight Recipes and Strategies for Every Schedule. I marked several interesting recipes. I liked that most of the recipes used basic ingredients. Another bonus is that there was little risk the dishes would include anything my sometimes picky husband would not eat. I opted to make the Pasta e Fagioli. I stuck to the recipe although I did cut back on the spinach (picky husband, remember?). The picky husband declared that the soup was delicious and that I could include more spinach next time. I love having another meatless meal we both enjoy. The soup came together quickly and like many of the recipes is an excellent weeknight meal. This is a wonderful resource for busy families.

If you're anything like me and my boyfriend, then about half of your conversations revolve around one topic: what to have for dinner. Well, cookbook authors Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion have a plan for us. It's The Dinner Plan, and it's their newest cookbook. Their original, Keepers, is filled with recipes that are literally "keepers," the ones you keep and use over and over. And this new cookbook is filled with more of the same. 

Because The Dinner Plan is specifically written to help plan good dinners, and to help us make good dinners on those nights when we have no plan, it focuses on 5 categories of meals: Make Ahead, Staggered (for those nights family members need to eat at different times), One Dish, Pantry, and Extra Fast. Each of these categories has a colored tab, so you can look at the pages and flip through until your find one that fits what you need. Or you can hit the back of the book, where the recipes are organized by category as well as by name of recipe and by ingredients in a typical index.

Many recipes are in more than one category, so when you need something Staggered that you can grab from your Pantry, they've got you covered. And there are even some recipes that hit all the categories, like the Tex-Mex Salmon-in-Foil, Skillet Chicken Parm, Bacon and Egg Fried Rice, and Spicy or Not Black Bean Soup. 

And these two former editors from Saveur Magazine (so you know they've got the chops) know what's important for a family. They not only load you up with delicious recipes for mains and sides, they include "The Forgotten Meal," the snacks. With ideas like Dark Chocolate-Banana Bread, Baked Layered Nachos, Stromboli, and (making my mouth water!) Melted Mozzarella Squares as well as healthier options like Overnight Yoghurt-Chia Jars and Date-Banana Smoothie, snacks are now part of the plan. 

And of course, Brennan and Campion give you all the information you need to not only make all these dishes but also to create some amazing meals of your own. With articles throughout the book to help you up your dinner game, these women make sure you know what to stock in your pantry, how to make all the sauces you need to impress your family and friends, how to spatchcock a chicken, how to make dinner parties easier, and so much more. This book is stacked with ideas, information, and recipes that will help with real-life dinners on real-life weeknights. 

I am a cookbook junkie, but I'm getting a lot pickier about which books I try to cram onto my overfilled shelves. But once I finished looking over the electronic galleys of The Dinner Plan, I knew I had to go out and buy a hard copy of this one. I will use it often. And I'm going to have to get my own copy of Keepers too. After seeing what these two women have to offer, I'm all in. I'll find the shelf space somewhere. 



Galleys for The Dinner Plan were provided by Abrams through NetGalley.com, with many thanks.

Dinner times are usually family time for most of us. So enjoy your family time with these wonderful recipes..........

Recipes I cooked from this book:
Linguine with cauliflower, lemon, and bread crumbs
Baked penne with green chiles
Skillet chicken parm
Salisbury steak
Ham and cheese frittata (in muffin tins)
Foolproof carbonara
The authors of Keepers are back with The Dinner Plan, a cleverly categorized book for busy cooks. Recipes are categorized in several ways that are not mutually exclusive using a colorful tab system: make-ahead, pantry, staggered, one-dish, and extra-fast. These are pretty helpful for people who are scrambling to get food on the table at the last minute, and for the families who have kids with practice or someone who works a different schedule and don’t all sit down for dinner at once. There is also a table of recipes by category, which is helpful. On one cute “Think outside the plate” page, they suggest eating over the sink. Hey, finally some advice I can take! The cookbook covers the gamut from super healthy sushi hand rolls and salads to Salisbury steak and nachos. The recipes that I cooked had great flavor and were really fast honest-to-goodness weeknight recipes. I am actually going to buy a hard copy of this book for my shelf, it has a little bit of everything and I can see myself sitting down with it frequently to plan a week’s meals. The carbonara was my favorite, since it’s something my mom used to make all the time and just hits that nostalgia note for me. The last time I made carbonara I had to cobble two recipes together to make it work. This one really is foolproof! It’s a keeper. My husband loved the Salisbury steak and the kids even ate it. I can’t believe I made Salisbury steak, since that just brings back memories of sad school lunches, but it was pretty delicious and had a lot of flavor.

My only quibble with it is that there is a chapter entitled “Eggs, Rice, and Meatless” which is perfectly good though a bit sparse and as someone who likes to eat meat-free I was a bit dismayed, only to find out that there are tons of meatless recipes spread throughout the book, like in the Pasta chapter and in the sides chapters. Vegetarians could make good use of this book with the existing recipes and by substituting meat-free ingredients. I would definitely consider giving this book as a gift to busy parents or to a college student. It’s good for everyone.

I am sorry there is no review, but I was unable to read this cookbook before the license expired and it became inaccessible.

I love all ABRAMS's cookbooks and this one is great as well|

Despite the generic sounding title, The Dinner Plan nicely ticks the boxes of what I hope/expect from a cookbook: beautifully presented, smartly designed/executed/indexed/referenced, interesting recipes that are easy to make and don't require an expensive list of one-time-use ingredients, and a family friendly bias. I had no issues with any of the recipes and especially appreciated specific brand-name recommendations for useful products that make the cooking/storing job easier.

Right from the beginning, it is obvious that the book is intelligently cross referenced. The recipes are broken down by main ingredient (Fish and Shellfish, Chicken and Turkey, Beef and Pork, Eggs, Rice and Meatless, Pasts, Soups, Sandwiches, Dinner Salads, Vegetables, Starches and Grains, and the Forgotten Meal). But they are also categorized by preparation requirements: Make Ahead, Staggered, One-Dish, Pantry Friendly, and Extra-Fast. The latter categories are color coded on each recipe page as well as indexed in the back of the book.

Most, but not all, recipes have photographs, many are full page and all are professionally presented. Each recipe has a serving amount, introduction/description, bold face ingredients list, paragraph (not numbered) instructions, and a large section for tips/more info/variations. At the side of the page are the color coded cross reference categories (e.g., Shrimp Scamp is cross referenced as Pantry friendly and Extra-Fast).

Because one of the authors comes from a Japanese background, there are some great Asian-inspired recipes like Okonomiyaki and Peanut Sauce that are kid friendly. But the classic North American dishes/European dishes are well represented as well. From Beef Stew in a hurry to Bolognese Sauce.

The tips are great - whether a full page stand out on Asian ingredients/recipes or the 5 recipes from the book that you can always have ready with minimum time. Even the recipes have separate and very detailed tips on various options, things like rice cookers, making your own cutlets, easy dinner parties, etc. etc.

The back of the book has a beautiful 'recipes by category' index in six colors - and then a full page pantry ingredients checklist of items that have long shelf times and mean you don't have to do special shopping every other day for the recipes.

In all, I was very impressed with this book and have enjoyed the recipes. Nothing too exotic, with easy to find ingredients, friendly and easy-to-follow recipes and very smart choices about how to present the information. This is a book written for the reader and not one that the author writes only from his/her experience without regard to how the reader will actually use the book. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher

THE DINNER PLAN is a prime example of what an informative, helpful cookbook should be. Authors Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion have really gone above and beyond to create a resource cookbook to help everyone prepare dinner no matter their schedule.

The introduction starts off with a great guide for 5 Weeknight Meal Strategies. Each recipe in the book is tagged with one or more of these strategies to help you know the perfect meal for just the right circumstances be it make ahead or fast preparation meals.

After a brief “About Us” page, the authors provide a list of 10 Gadgets for Greater Kitchen Efficiency. While I have a few of the mentioned items, I don’t have the ones they recommend, and I doubt most readers will either, but I have no doubt we can all make out with what we have.

Next, the recipes. Some very simple, while others may take a bit more work. Beautiful full page color photos show finished dishes that will make readers’ stomachs growl. There are standard sections of recipes that include offerings such as . . . Buffalo Shrimp Tacos, One-Pan Chicken with Lemon and Potatoes, Skillet Chicken Parm, Turkey Sloppy Joes, Salisbury Steak, Mexican Skillet Lasagna, Bacon and Egg Fried Rice, Eggplant and Tomato Pasta, Corn and Potato Chowdar, Veggie Italian Hereos, Braised Green Beans and Tomatoes, Dark Chocolate-Banana Bread (Note: There are only about four dessert recipes), and so much more!

Scattered among the recipes are full page tips for things like The New Dinner Party, and Home Alone. All leading to the end of the book with Recipes by Category (with the meal strategies codes), and a list of staple pantry ingredients.

THE DINNER PLAN is a fantastic recipe book that will make a wonderful addition to any kitchen.

A cookbook perfect for families today.
There isn't much I don't love about this cookbook. From the bright clear pictures, to the really neat layout it's a winner for me. I love being able to easily look for recipes that are make ahead, or recipes that will hold well if my family is in and out during dinnertime. With 3 girls in dance classes this is a huge plus for my family!
The recipes are real food which I love!. I wish it wasn't quite so heavy on Asian flavors but that is just me being picky because I have a hubby who won't eat soy sauce. lol
I will be cooking the sheet pan fajitas for dinner tonight and have 2 or 3 other recipes from this book I'm planning to use this week. A must buy for my busy kitchen.

This is a terrific book for busy families to use. The recipes are broken down into categories for quick reference. Most all the recipes are with readily available ingredients and seemed easy to follow. There are also tons of tips on cooking utensils and lots of other helpful ideas. This is a great book for cooks of all levels.

So this book came along at a perfect time in my life. My organization and meal planning stage. I decided to go through the recipes and come up with a month's worth of meal plans. This was actually a lot of fun to do, because this cookbook is so comprehensive. It gives advice on which sides go with which main dishes, it includes a variety of recipes to accommodate different schedules and time allotments, and it was overall just fun! With great illustrations, short but interesting tips and facts, and an easy to navigate organization system of its own.

One of our favorites was the corn and potato chowder, which of course, I adapted ever so slightly. I made mine in the crock pot, never turning on the stove. I placed the broth ingredients (minus the creme and cornstarch) into my crock pot. I added fresh carrots to mine, and a much larger portion of ham, because we're meat eaters around here. After letting it simmer most of the day while I was at work, I came home and whisked a bit of the cornstarch into the cream, topped it off, and let it simmer just long enough to thicken. Made an amazing chowder, even my kids loved it, and since I used a handy dandy crock pot bag, there wasn't even any clean up!

Also, the steak sandwiches made for an amazing treat. I took it a step further and used the leftover meat to add to the asparagus farfalle and turned it into a complete meal. So many little adjustments, yet so easy to make this into a more comprehensive book. I made the cod in foil, but laid it on top of the green bean salad in the foil packets, and baked it all together. My family loved it! I have a few more recipes laid out for this month, and I can already guarantee they're going to be family favorites!

I would absolutely recommend this book to the unorganized like me. If you are a seasoned cook, or a creative one, there are so many easy ways to take these to another level. If you're not, then these are great just the way they are and keep it simple enough even my husband could prepare them! (No offense intended to those men who actually do cook!)
~ George, 5 Stars

If there is one thing that I am always on the hunt for, it is a recipe that is quick, delicious, and simple to make. The Dinner Plan is a well-organized, eye-catching book that has some fantastic suggestions to get a healthy dinner ready no matter what your day has in store. The ideas take into account all sorts of different lifestyles, but they are most definitely geared towards family meals.

What sets The Dinner Plan apart from other time-saving cookbooks isn’t really the actual recipes. In fact, it is in the way the recipes are categorized as to whether it is a make-ahead, staggered, one-dish, pantry, or extra-fast. Knowing what type of ingredients are needed and the time commitment needed to prepare certain dishes takes the guess-work out of where to start. There are also tips included in the book that include what sorts of ingredients and equipment to buy.

If you have a family that eats at different points of the evening, you will most likely find a dish that will satisfy the needs of your family. Making a meal that can be served at any point of the day, or easily reheated makes some of these recipes really unique. For instance, the Kitchen Sink Burritos that I prepared can be made fairly quickly and then the fixings can be set out for anyone to put together at their own leisure. This recipe is also a much lighter and cheaper version than the ones you can purchase at a local burrito bar, as there are no added preservatives.

The Dinner Plan is an interesting take on how to serve dinner to your family when life just seems to get in the way. If you are on the hunt for suggestions on how to eat healthy meals for a busy lifestyle, this may be the book for you. It will give you a new perspective on how to make meals without the stress over the time commitment involved.

This is a great cookbook - loved the pictures, the way it is organized, and the tips. Nice index too. The pictures are vivid and beautiful and definitely make you salivate. The only thing I didn't like was on some of the pictures the food glazing the dirty vessels that looked like they would require some major cleanup. The recipes use mostly common, easy to find ingredients and seem fairly simple to make - even for a novice. I didn't find anything in the book that would require a major amount of kitchen skills. I did notice a substantial amount of Asian influence on the recipes. Many of the recipes sound delicious and there are a couple I can hardly wait to try!

I really like the way the recipes are organized/categorized as Make Ahead, Staggered, One-Dish, Pantry, or Extra Fast. Some recipes fell into more than one category. I can see this would help you decide what recipe to cook on a particular day depending on your family's schedules. The tips given were really useful too - I actually went out and purchased a couple of the recommended items from one of the tips.

Thanks to the authors and ABRAMS through Netgalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

I received this book as a digital advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

According to the Introduction, the authors planned for this cookbook to be “a new and different cookbook devoted to navigating the various situations that the typical workweek throws at people.” At the end of the Introduction, the authors discuss ten name brand gadgets for greater kitchen efficiency, ranging from the obscure like silicone lids to the common like the Y-peeler.

After about a dozen pages of introductory material, there are over 200 pages with approximately 135 recipes for main dishes and side dishes. The main dishes are divided into six chapters: fish and shellfish; chicken and turkey; beef and pork; eggs, rice and meatless; pasta; and soups, sandwiches, and dinner salads. The side dishes are divided into two chapters: vegetables, and starches and grains. There is also a chapter about the Forgotten Meal, which the authors define as “the food kids hoover between school and dinner.” At the top of each recipe is a clear title and yield. There is a brief headnote that discusses the finer points of preparation and serving the dish, with occasional comments about Caroline and Kathy or their families. Ingredients are listed along the left side, with measurements in both American and metric units. In general, the ingredients are pantry ingredients or other readily available ingredients. Recipe steps are written in short sentences in paragraph form, and are relatively easy to follow. All the recipes are coded along the outer edge as to whether they are Make-Ahead, Staggered, One-Dish, Pantry, and/or Extra-Fast dishes. The vast majority of the recipes are both Make-Ahead and Staggered. Recipe tips in light blue call out boxes are sprinkled throughout the recipe pages. About halfway through the fish and shellfish section is a two-page spread with Next Step Asian Ingredients, which describes seven Asian ingredients that are versatile enough to include in an every day pantry. About halfway through the soups, sandwiches, and dinner salads section is a blue page about Think Outside the Plate, which gives some “refreshing alternatives” to having dinner at a properly set table. I don’t agree with some of their suggestions, like “Right from the pan” or “Over the sink,” because I think that if someone puts forth the effort to make a home cooked meal, those consuming it should put forth some effort to enjoy it rather than have it “gobbled up” over a sink. Of the additional informational pages, the one I really appreciated was the one about how to spatchcock a chicken. The eight top tips for pulling off a great dinner party were fairly self-evident if you’ve thrown enough “adult” dinner parties, but would definitely be appreciated by anyone who was a newcomer to the dinner party scene.

The recipe selection was fairly diverse. There were some from the Chinese tradition, the Thai tradition, and the French tradition. Not to mention Cajun dirty rice, a Viet Namese style Bahn Mi sandwich and a Cuban style sandwich as well. It felt like there were a good number of recipes that used turkey sausage and ground turkey as substitutes for pork and beef, which was refreshing to see. I appreciated that, in the pasta section, the same exact instructions for cooking pasta were repeated in each recipe so that each recipe could stand alone. I thought that was a much better approach that opening the section with a blue page of “Preparing the Perfect Pasta” and then having each pasta recipe refer back to that page. The starches and grains section ranged from the expected potatoes and quinoa to the unexpected wheat berries and Israeli couscous.

The photography in this book is lovely. Almost every recipe is accompanied by a moderately styled photograph of the completed dish, which gives a good idea of what the finished recipe should look like. However, the recipe steps are so clear that there usually isn’t any doubt about what to do.

The one critique I do have of this book is that it is clearly oriented toward parents with school age children. Yet, in their introduction, the authors pitched the book as if it was geared toward everyone, “whether you’re feeding just yourself, a roommate, a spouse/partner, or an entire family.” For example, although there was a half-hearted attempt to include the “singleton” in the “Home Alone” blue page, that page was primarily targeted toward the frazzled parent who scarcely gets a moment alone. In fact, the term “singleton” only appears twice in the book: once on that blue page, and once in the description of the “Staggered” category. Despite the authors’ promise that the headnotes would be “without personal anecdotes or other fluff,” there were frequent references to whose children approved of which recipes, to which recipes were good for long, very early drives to ice hockey games, and other similar comments that would appeal to parents of school age children. In fact, the inclusion of a whole chapter about “the food kids hoover between school and dinner” is a testament to the focus on that audience. Likewise, the corresponding blue pages about “Not-to-Be-Forgotten Meals” that debate whether it is hypocritical to talk about giving your kids wholesome and nutritious food when their parents ate unhealthy foods after school and that catalog the original favorite after school childhood concoctions could only appeal to parents of school age children. I don’t mind that the book had a specific target audience; what I do mind is that the authors were not open and honest about it.

Overall, I may recommend this book for friends who are parents of school age children and could use some help in the meal planning department. I would not recommend this as a housewarming gift for a single friend just starting out or a couple beginning a life together. Although the recipes are basic enough and well written enough to serve those purposes, the overall tone and ancillary content make the book unsuitable for those purposes.

Despite the fact that I have marked about a dozen recipes to try, I have yet to prepare any of the recipes from this book; however, I will update this review when I do.

THE DINNER PLAN by Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion (Abrams, Sept. 19) is subtitled "Simple Weeknight Recipes and Strategies for Every Schedule" so it definitely caught my attention. However, I thought the number of ingredients per recipe seemed relatively large. What does help is the very useful Pantry List - getting organized with those ingredients may indeed make the cooking task less daunting. Brennan and Campion also take special care to label recipes as "extra fast" and "one dish," for example. Within each recipe, there are helpful notes about "make ahead" or "staggered" directions. They also suggest some "back pocket" favorites like Shrimp Scampi, Skillet Chicken Parm, or Frittata. Ingredient lists and oven temperatures are listed in both US and European measures which blend nicely with the mix of choices across cultures.