Robin Rescues Dinner: 52 Weeks of Quick-Fix Meals, 350 Recipes, and a Realistic Plan to Get Weeknight Dinners on the Table

by Robin Miller

Known for her quick, bright ideas for healthy and satisfying meals, Robin Miller shares her unique and completely realistic strategy for a busy workweek in Robin Rescues Dinner. It's as simple as planning three dishes in advance so that you're prepared, no matter what the week brings! Here you'll find 52 weeks of meals, each including three weeknight main dishes, heaps of suggestions for morphing one dish into another, a bounty of side dishes and desserts, and clever tips and techniques to speed up prep time. Illustrated in color.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published June 16, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Robin has been a food writer and a nutritionist since 1990. She is the author of the best-selling cookbook Quick Fix Meals. Her popular show Quick Fix Meals with Robin Miller currently airs on the Food Network. Her primetime show Robin to the Rescue premiered on the Food Network in March 2007. Robin's recipes and nutrition features can be seen regularly in a variety of media outlets, including the Today show on NBC, The Early Show on CBS, Good Morning America on ABC, Live! with Regis & Kelly, Fox News Channel, Food Network, HGTV, Guideposts, Cooking Light, Health, Fitness, Fit Pregnancy, Woman's World, and Parade. Robin has a master's degree in food and nutrition from New York University."

Reviews

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robin Miller, another in the stable of Food Network's talent, provides a well crafted cookbook here. The premise is pretty straightforward: put together about three homemade recipes for each week of the year. Between the three meals, maybe a couple meals out, and leftovers, one would be set each week--with some tasty home cooked meals as a key part of the overall portfolio of meals. At the outset, she notes that one has to plan out the week while shopping on the weekend. She further notes, as per her thesis, tat (page 16): "Cooking three school-night meals a week is completely doable, especially when you make 'planned' leftovers from one meal to use on another night."

Let's take a look at some of the recipes provided in this volume. "Mango-Habanero Pork over Cuban Guacamole." Sounds forbidding from the title. However, if one actually read the recipe, it is not overly daunting. I have just begun cooking with habanero peppers, and I would surely caution against too abundant a use of these hot devils!

Or "Scallops with Brown Butter, Lemon, and Capers." I have come to appreciate capers (my most common use for them is chicken piccata, where they add a delectable taste). Here, the wedding of scallops, lemon, and capers sounds delightful. This is a recipe that I intend to try. Once more, it sounds quite doable (and enough experience cooking tells you if a recipe is doable or a bear).

Every so often, I enjoy a "Fra Diavolo" dish when dining out. I have never made such a dish at home, though. This recipe sounds like a keeper. Linguine, habanero or jalapeno pepper, , garlic, cubed cooked chicken breasts, oregano, red pepper flakes, diced tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, and basil. "Yum-o!" If I can convince my family to try a little hot sauce (a long shot, I admit), I would like to try this.

And so on and so on. A nice cookbook, promising to help working cooks out, with home cooking several nights a week.

[Kaye Cloutman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robin Rescues Dinner rescues on-the-go people with a compilation of 52 weeks of quick fix meals, presenting over 350 recipes, including side-dishes and desserts, from January to December. Robin Miller is the star of Food Network’s Quick Fix Meals and Robin to the Rescue. Robin Rescues Dinner is all about achieving a realistic plan for preparing healthy, home-cooked and scrumptious dinners without the stress. Robin tells us that it’s all in the planning, and I agree that proper setting up on one’s part will help avoid meal or food preparation emergencies on his/her family’s part. I’ve tried about 31 recipes in the book myself, and I was never disappointed.

In our current economic situation, it would be in such bad taste to throw away food, so I love how Robin turns leftovers into mouthwatering appetizers or delectable next-day-meals; extra steak from the Seared Terriyaki Beef Roll with Gingered Vegetables, for instance, can be quickly morphed into Chichimangas Ranchero with Steak and Pink Beans. My personal favorites are the Pasta Paella with Saffron Broth, Creamy Linguine with Ham, Goat Cheese, and Basil, and Scallops with Brown Butter, Lemon and Capers…and the Peach Tiramisu Parfait is to die for! The photography is superb, with great plating shots, and for a mom like me who has to juggle two jobs, two kids, a husband, and maintaining a clean house, anyone who can save me a few extra minutes of “me” time rescues me from having a meltdown.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have only cooked one recipe so far, Chicken Penne with Artichokes, Tomatoes, and Pesto Cream. I added asparagus and roasted red peppers. It was fast, healthy, delicious, and was much more elegant than your typical weeknight "throw together" pasta. Our family loved it! I can't wait to try some more recipes. We like to eat healthy and this cookbook is full of recipes that use lean meats, seafood and fresh veggies. It is meat-centric, though, so I do not recommend for vegetarians. I like that the recipes can stand alone, or you can use Robin's week-long menu that builds upon recipes made earlier in the week. For example: cooking extra meat or veggies earlier in the week, to use in a recipe later in the week. And if you are trying to eat less meat, the week-long menus include 3 interconnected recipes, so there are several other nights for vegetarian dinners too. Another thing I love about this cookbook is that it incorporates a variety of flavors: american, asian, mexican, french, latin american, italian, southwest, and mediterranean. My family likes to mix it up and not eat the same foods over and over again, this is perfect! Also great are Robin's lists of quick meals, 20 Fast Meals for a Rotisserie Chicken, 10 Fast Meals from Leftover Seafood, 17 Fast Pantry Pasta meals, and more. There are plenty of beautiful, full-page, color photos to make your mouth water. Great cookbook for busy people who want to eat healthy and with lots of flavor!

[bernadette · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was an impulse buy but has been very useful in helping me get out of a cooking rut. These dishes are simple, fairly quick, and very convenient in that the leftovers from one meal are used to make a second or even third dinner later in the week. The flavors are bold and strong, not very nuanced at all, but very filling and they do taste good. The meals are geared toward the American "meat and potatoes" crowd so eating all that meat during the week can feel a bit heavy, so I've been skipping the third suggested meal so far and cooking something lighter instead. With that said, I'm finally understanding why people love potatoes so much (I grew up on rice). I wish there was a little less seafood recipes and more vegetarian dishes. It's a good book and definitely helping me to vary what we eat from week to week.

[Jennifer Barr · Rating 3 out of 5]

The recipes are good, and I like the prep ahead info, but the idea of having only 3 planned meals a week is unrealistic for my family, and seems kind of sad to me. I know there are families out there where this would be an improvement, and maybe it's more than I realize. We eat out maybe twice a month. So it would be nice if this book were laid out in a way that could be useful for those of us who are already used to cooking.

[Beka · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not a bad cookbook, but it suffers from the curse of the 90s and early 00s. Lots of recipes with very few pictures (and those pictures situated all together in clumps, not near their respective recipes). Also, though her recipes definitely seem able to be made quickly on busy nights, they're not inexpensive in the least. Not bad, but not terribly helpful to me.

[Angela Parks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not bad. Not one that I want to go and buy for my cook-book collection. Pictures would help! I know I made one of the recipes, but for the world of me I can not remember what it was!

[Melinda Bialousz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy to understand. Not too many ingredients that I didn't already have. Good for weeknights!

[Ginnie Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those books destined to become a busy person's bible. It helps you feel super organized even if you aren't and even a beginner cook can use and understand it.

[Marissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

OK recipes.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looks like it'd be a good cookbook to have around, but the recipes don't interest me much. Not my kind of food.

[Chrissy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars