In August 2008, I moved out on my own for the first (and only) time, and I had never consistently cooked before. Bereft of any better ideas, I headed to my local bookstore and picked up this, mainly due to its promising-sounding title. Now, almost two years later (and as my time living on my own comes to an end), I've finished fifty-eight of its hundred-something recipes, but given I've done basically all of the ones that appeal to me, that means I'm done with it. Friends of mine on facebook (and indeed, enemies since it is a public photo album) have seen many of these recipes chronicled on the infamous Food Log, complete with "amusing" commentary.

Overall, it pretty much lives up to its title. Most of the recipes do take only thirty minutes, though many of them cheat by not counting time spent chopping vegetables and the like. At least one even listed "cooked pasta" in the ingredients, which seems like an exceptionally large cheat to me! None of these recipes are ever going to win awards for greatness, but many of them were enjoyable, and some of them were very good indeed. I used a simple notation systems as I made them: check-plus for worth making again, check for acceptable, check-minus for avoid. There were about a dozen checks-- usually for being bland-- and only a couple things that earned check-minuses. Of course, I tended to just not make things I thought I wouldn't like, which I'm sure helped.

I liked most of the soups I had, especially the spicy noodle soup, a nice chiliesque soup. The "meaty main dishes", mostly beef or pork based, were generally good, though I had a run of boring things in picadillo, goulash, and Italian burgers, all of which I'm sure were extremely authentic. The "taco Joes" in this section where intended to be some kind of Mexican equivalent to a sloppy Joe put in a taco shell, but I repurposed them as a chip dip that I designated "sloppy Josés", and my friend Jorge amended that to "sloppy Estebans". There were a ton of poultry dishes, which makes sense since chicken is pretty hard to mess up; I really liked the jambalaya recipe. Also a lot of pastas, many of which were good. How hard is it to mess up some kinda sauce on some kinda noodle? I didn't really dip into the side dish or dessert sections, as I don't often make either. (Cooking for only myself, most of these recipes supplied four-plus meals as is.) I'm sure I'll continue to dip back into the book from time to time now that I know what the good stuff is.

Only one big complaint: the book's "Cincinnati-style chili" contains several gaffes that indicate it is nothing of the sort. There are beans in it, but even worse, the only seasoning is chili powder, when proper Cincinnati chili is distinguished by its use of cinnamon if nothing else! My grandmother's recipe also includes allspice, bay leaves, red pepper, A-1 steak sauce, garlic powder, and cumin, and I can't imagine what you would get without this delicate balance.