Saving Dinner by Leanne Ely is a book designed to bring families back to the dinner table. I discovered it after finding Flylady. I originally visited Flylady for tips on keeping on my home clean and liked the idea of weekly menu planning that was introduced in Saving Dinner.
The book is divided into four main sections, with each section being designated by the season of the year. Saving Dinner is not a cook book, but a collection of menus designed to inspire you to cook for your family. Each section brings new recipes based on the season. There are eight weeks of menus in each section with six days for each week. The weekly menu is designed to have only six days to accommodate a family’s favorite meal, or activities that would eliminate the need for the seventh day’s menu.
The other thing that makes this book different is that each week of recipes also comes with a shopping list for the entire week of menus. If you are sticking to each weeks menu it would work really well, but if you need to eliminate one of the meals or alter it, it may take a little work in figuring out what items on the shopping list need to be changed.
The book offers some great recipes that are designed to be healthy, but taste good as well. The other item I like in the book are the side bars of information sporadically placed throughout the book. The side bars of information offer useful information on cooking and kitchen tips. I found the tips to be quite useful and enjoyed the authors insight.