Practical recipes, detailed instructions, and personable authors make this a cookbook I will come back to again and again. ( )

Thesis of this book is simple and straightforward: if you’re going to invest the time and effort to cook meals for your family, you can save both by making large batches, the remainder put in the freezer for later thawing and serving. But the authors take this idea a step further. Why not swap some of your own creations with those of friends and neighbors, for even more variety at the dining room table? Thus the concept of the “freezer club” is born. Actually, this duo takes it even a step further than that, with the notion of a “freezer cooking party,” in which participants gather at a convenient place, such as a neighbor’s home or favorite coffee shop, and plan a two to four hour weekend afternoon to jointly create the dishes outlined within these pages. Before going home, each member gets to take back with them wholesome meals prepared by his or her cohorts, which then are stored in the freezer until it’s time for them to be enjoyed.
If any of this seems daunting to the uninitiated, fear not, for the authors take readers step by step through the whole process. Chapter 1, “A Deep Dive into the Cold Chest,” covers the benefits of freezer cooking (they list seven, including eating healthier and jumpstarting one’s social life), the six steps to creating successful freezer meal, and food safety principles. Chapter 2 is entitled, “Throw a Freezer Cooking Party,” and gives clearly delineated instructions on how to pull this deal off. Chapter 3 does the same for “Start a Freezer Club.” By the time the reader has gotten thus far, he or she will be getting itchy fingers, wanting to ring up everyone they know to get this show on the road.
So much for Part 1. Part 2, and the bulk of the book, consists of recipes for the aforementioned freezer meals, with chapters dedicated to specific ingredients or entrees, such as chicken, beef, seafood, and so on. Yes, there is a chapter for breakfast items. Conner and Tiemeyer state that each recipe has been tried in-home and appears in this book only after it has proven itself to be nutritious, delicious, freezable and can be made within 30 minutes. It is evident that much thought has gone into the preparation of said recipes. An introductory paragraph gives some background about the dish and helpful tips regarding preparation. Ingredients and amounts appear in a column on the left hand of the page, while on the right column are step-by-step instructions for cooking the meal, followed by directions for freezing and unthawing same. Full color photography throughout the book illustrates many of the finished products and they had this reviewer wanting to tear out the pages and eat that!
Full disclosure: at the time of this review, none of the recipes were actually tried out, due to time constraints, but several are on the to-do list, in order to satisfy the voracious appetites of a growing family. For those who desire to stretch their food dollars and have more choices at dinnertime, this lovely cookbook is highly recommended for purchase.
Review by Michael F. Bemis ( )