Better Homes and Gardens Meals for One or Two

by Better Homes and Gardens

Over one hundred ninety recipes for soups, meat and poultry entrees, fish, omelets, main-meal salads, vegetables, desserts, and beverages are augmented by tips on small-scale-cooking techniques

Genres: Cooking, Reference, Cookbooks

96 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Better Homes and Gardens is the fourth best selling magazine in the United States. Better Homes and Gardens focuses on interests regarding homes, cooking, gardening, crafts, healthy living, decorating, and entertaining. The magazine is published 12 times per year by the Meredith Corporation. It was founded in 1922 by Edwin Meredith, who had previously been the United States Secretary of Agriculture under Woodrow Wilson.

Better Homes and Gardens is one of the "Seven Sisters", a group of women's service magazines.

Reviews

[Franci · Rating 3 out of 5]

#86 of 2020

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recipes designed for the individual or a couple. A wide variety of recipes are in the book and there are some color photos. The recipes are also easy to prepare.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see how this might be helpful for someone who hasn’t already been cooking for one or two for the past 25 years. Maybe if one was just starting out or an established cook needed to adjust their mindset from cooking for several. The dessert section was dog-eared in my copy, so someone must have gotten use from it. Single-serving cheesecakes!

There are tips for buying and storing food for cooking fewer portions, as well as the very solid advice of serving leftovers a different way. That said, it’s not for me, but I saw nothing too objectionable.

We have been two in this household for the past 15 years. We very occasionally host others but on the more frequent occasions that I want to make something difficult to scale down but too big for just us, we are lucky to have some lovely neighbors who seldom cook anymore and will meet us at the back fence for free home-cooked “takeout.”

[Noele Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although it's more than 40 years old, these recipes are still current for easy and tasty cooking in the present.

The page with Ham Fried Rice has a few stains on it, and the corner is permanently turned in, because we still refer to it.

Even though we have most of the Better Homes & Gardens collection of thin cookbooks, "Meals for One or Two" is our outstanding favorite.

[Lisa Kisner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I lost my copy of this book and I plan on purchasing another copy. The recipes were good and I used mine a lot when I married my husband in 1982.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mom purchased this book in the 1980s after we kiddies left home and I inherited it a few years back. At first I thought it was strictly retro kitsch, from its yellow-tinged pre-Photoshop images to its recipes like salmon loaf, pork stroganoff, and Hungarian frankfurters. But when I actually tried a recipe, Cornish hens with cranberry-orange sauce, I was hooked. These old recipes work! Not only that, most recipes can be doubled for a larger family and/or leftovers.

Recipes are divided into Entrée, Side Dish, Dessert, and Beverage and Snack chapters. A short Tips and Techniques chapter includes a useful chart with maximum food storage time for refrigerator or freezer. Some recipes call for ingredients that I don’t use, like frozen broccoli, which can be easily substituted. Others seem simple and useful though I don’t eat that kind of food, like fish and chips and fettuccini Alfredo. And then there are to go-to recipes.

Family favorites include turkey drumstick dinner, chicken pot pies, dried fruit chicken curry, garden Swiss steak, wild rice-stuffed red snapper, Pennsylvania Dutch pork steaks, herbed tomato soup, wilted spinach salad, and spicy hot chocolate. Must-try recipes include spicy barbecued chicken, sweet-sour bratwurst skillet, sole Provencal, cheese soufflé, shrimp and crab with Louis dressing, home style rice pudding, and peppermint baked Alaska. And yes, I did try the “too retro” salmon loaf, and it’s delicious.

Anyone with an interest in American cookbooks of the historical variety will enjoy this book. People used to cooking for a family might find it useful, as my mom did, when the kids are all packed off to college.

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gift to my grandmother.