Foreword by Ree Drummond

Whether you enjoy cooking or not, it can be exhausting to cook a new meal from scratch every single night—especially if you have a family to feed. Batch cooking is a way around this but means that half your meals will be reheated leftovers, which gets unappetizing after a few days. Instead, Cyndi Kane uses her “Save-It-Forward” method to cut down on cooking time and food waste and still feed her family something new every night. She reserves components of each meal she cooks to play a part in her meal the next night, reimagining her leftovers without rehashing them.

In this beautiful, practical book, she provides 15 weekly menus for getting dinner on the table 5 to 6 days a week with as little fuss as possible, and her quirky, chatty tone makes meal prep fun, too. Each week is themed for the sort of week you expect to have, such as No Time to Spare, Mad Skills, and Simple Meats and Veggies. She follows four principles for each meal she puts in front of her family. Each dinner needs to meet the following criteria:

• delicious (of course!)
• kid-friendly but not boring
• relatively healthy
• budget-friendly

Each recipe is accompanied by beautiful watercolor illustrations showing the finished dishes and visual menus showing the Save-It-Forward connections between each meal. Some of the recipes (and transformations) included are:

• Italian Sunday Gravy and Pasta (and Lentil Soup with Simple, Cheesy Spaghetti Squash)
• Skillet Smoked Sausage, Cabbage, and Potatoes (and Breakfast-for-Dinner Burritos)
• Stuffed Peppers over Pasta (and Italian Frittata)
• Shrimp Packet Dinner (and Cajun Chowder)
• Italian Beef Tips (and Mexican Beef Stew)

Readers will feel like dinnertime superheroes with these low-stress, super-practical, time-saving meals!