30-Minute Get Real Meals: Eat Healthy Without Going to Extremes Review

I love good food and I'm always anxious to sample something new. I don't necessarily like preparing food mainly because of the complicated recipes and, more than anything, because of the necessary time required to make a gourmet food dish. Fortunately, there are a good number of cook books that stress making tasty food in a short period of time. One of these books is Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Get Real Meals, a cook book created by the star of the cable television Food Network.

Book Commentary:

"30 Minute Get Real Meals" is a Rachael Ray publication from 2005. This likeable lady is best known for her food/travel programs on the Food Network and what led to this career on television was her love of food and her desire to share recipes for great tasting food that can be prepared easily and quickly by anyone, regardless of cooking talent.

I love to eat but I was never very interested in cooking, mainly because of the time factor. With my busy schedule and endless chores, I don't have the spare time necessary to make fancy food dishes. I am lucky to find a few spare minutes to cook a hamburger and I often purchase foods that are the simplest to prepare. But with this cookbook by Rachael Ray, most anyone can be transformed quickly into an amateur gourmet chef. The recipes Rachael Ray presents often require a lengthy list of ingredients (as many as 20, in some instances), but the preparation is simple and doesn't consume much time.

One thing that makes this cook book a little different from others is its "no frills" approach. Not only are the recipes simple to follow, Rachael Ray doesn't spend much time at all making small talk or discussing the recipes or food in general. The beginning of the book contains only a page or two of introductory material before launching directly into the recipes themselves. It then ends as suddenly as it begins, going directly to an index with nothing between that and the last recipe. I'm not so sure I like this approach. Even though I rarely cook food myself, I would still prefer a cookbook with a more actual written material to read. This cookbook is more like a reference guide.  

As far as the recipes go, many of the food items presented in this book are quite good and they should please most anyone. Ray covers eight different food categories in this cookbook which isn't many but it is enough for a good starter cookbook and the food dishes are sure to please. Some personal favorites of mine include Green and White Lightning Chunky Chicken Chili, Pork Loin Chops with Sweet and Hot Peppers (a simple recipe requiring only eight ingredients), and Swedish Meatballs on Noodles. There is even one full chapter dedicated to different ways to make burgers or to incorporate burgers into other meals.

The subtitle of this book is "Eat Healthy Without Going to Extremes". Ray talks about this briefly in the Confessions section at the beginning of the book. She points out that she doesn't like extremes of any sort and she is particularly dismayed at the trend toward elimination of carbohydrates from daily eating. Rachael Ray agrees that getting carbs under control can be an important step toward a trimmer waistline and healthier eating. But she rejects the idea that 100% (or nearly 100%) of carbs should be cut from everything we eat. This is why she includes, in this cookbook, recipes that are lower in carbs but not free from all carbs. I'm glad ray didn't get carried away with the "no carb" fad, like so many often do.

Some of the things lacking in this book include photos and nutritional data. There are only eight pages of pictures featuring color photos of twelve different foods from the recipes in the book. I would like to see more pictures than this because, among other reasons, the visual appeal is one of the primary motivators when it comes to making new foods. Also, there is no nutritional data- something that I find ironic after listening to Rachael Ray talk about the impracticality of going no carb.

Bottom Line Viewpoint:

Overall, Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Get Real Meals is a good cookbook that could have been better with a few enhancements and a little more talk from Rachael Ray herself. We all know from watching Rachael on television that she has the gift of gab but she doesn't share that gift very much in this cookbook. A little more talk, nutritional contents, and some more photos would make this cookbook a notch above its competitors and make it more rounded and complete.