Homemade-Ish - by Lauren McDuffie (Hardcover)

About the Book

Creating and enjoying home-cooked food is time well spent, but sometimes we're busy--almost too busy--to be bothered with the task of cooking, with the work of it all. How do we reconcile the impact and importance of providing home-cooked meals with the ever-lurking busyness that threatens to send us dashing to our doors to answer the call of our latest food deliveries? What do we do about this? With this cookbook, McDuffie shares more than 100 recipes that make use of store-bought shortcuts and quick-fix tricks for breakfasts; appetizers and snacks; soups; salads; pastas, grains, and meatless mains; meats and fish, and desserts.

Book Synopsis

"A must-purchase cookbook with a variety of quick and flavorful recipes."--Library Journal

Homemade-ish is a sassy, no-guilt cookbook, with more than 100 quick-and-easy recipes, that support busy folks wanting to provide healthy home-cooked meals to their family.

Creating and enjoying home-cooked food is time well spent, but sometimes we're busy--almost too busy--to be bothered with the task of cooking, with the work of it all. How do we reconcile the impact and importance of providing home-cooked meals with the ever-lurking busyness that threatens to send us dashing to our doors to answer the call of our latest food deliveries? What do we do about this?

Meant to be a beacon of comfort, Lauren McDuffie's Homemade-ish is an invitation to let your hair down and relax a little. No judging. No pretenses. Just simple, unfussy food that you really can throw together in minutes. Offering encouragement from one page to the next, Homemade-ish is here to be a supportive guide, a delicious devotional of sorts, with every recipe a reminder to take it easy on yourself, to keep it real.

With this cookbook, McDuffie shares more than 100 recipes that make use of store-bought shortcuts and quick-fix tricks for breakfasts; appetizers and snacks; soups; salads; pastas, grains, and meatless mains; meats and fish, and desserts. From jazzed-up bagged salads to improved-upon casseroles to faked and fabulous sweets, you can feed your family well, and actually have time to sit down and enjoy the meal together.

Review Quotes

How to balance limited time to cook, incorporate vegetables, and choose grocery store products is a consistent challenge of adulthood. Enter this cookbook from McDuffie (Southern Lights), of the My Kitchen Little blog, which focuses on health in the midst of convenience foods and how to best use the local grocery store to support homemade-ish cooking. Yes, there is kale involved, but also donuts, pre-made tortellini, mixed greens, leftovers, and red curry mac and cheese from scratch. Think of this title as a hybrid. One can easily switch between from-scratch recipes to mixing and matching convenient food items. McDuffie's goal is easy, fast, delicious recipes that meet the home cook where they are without being pretentious or intimidating. Only 13 kitchen tools are required, the hands-on time per recipe is about 20 minutes, and the ingredients are readily available. Readers may relate when they browse this work and see McDuffie's photographs of her mismatched plates. Her tongue-in-cheek commentary and sense of humor add to the fun of reading the recipe introductions. VERDICT A must-purchase cookbook with a variety of quick and flavorful recipes.--Sarah Sieg "Library Journal"

About the Author

Lauren McDuffie is a cookbook author (Smoke, Roots, Mountain, Harvest, and Southern Lights), food blogger, photographer/stylist, and creator of the cooking blog, My Kitchen Little. She is also the creator of the critically acclaimed and award-winning food blog, Harvest and Honey, and has articles, recipes, and photography published in various forms. Originally from Lexington, Kentucky, she lived in Charleston, South Carolina, for a number of years, and has recently relocated to Lake Oswego, Oregon, with her husband and two children.