Every Day with Babs: 101 Family-Friendly Dinners for Every Day of the Week: A Cookbook - Hardcover

Costello, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593797906 ISBN 13: 9780593797907

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, 2025

Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Everybody’s favorite grandmother is here to answer the age-old question "What's for dinner?" with 101 tried-and-true recipes, plus genius tips and tricks that make getting dinner on the table even easier

From her years of experience feeding her family as a mother of four and now a grandmother of nine, Barbara Costello has perfected her roster of comforting and delicious family-approved meals. Now all the mealtime ingenuity that has been passed down to her, or that she’s earned through trial and error, is here in this book, for you! Every Day with Babs will be your go-to dinner resource, with Babs as your surrogate mom or grandma helping to get delicious meals organized, prepped, and on the table in no time, every night of the week.

In the pages of Every Day, Babs has done all the thinking for you because with so much on your plate already, you shouldn’t have to stress about dinner! The chapters are organized by day of the week, each with a particular theme or cooking method that keeps in mind the rhythm of the week. We all know making dinner on a Monday feels very different than a Sunday, so there are recipes to suit everyone’s mood, schedule, and cooking style:

• Get Your “Sheet” (Pan) Together Monday: Sheet-pan recipes such as Roasted Sausage, Peppers & Gnocchi, Maple-Lime Salmon with Coconut Rice, Lemon Basil Chicken & Couscous, and Family Fajita Night

• Eat Twice Twosday: Batch cooking at its best, with Grammie’s Chicken Cutlets, I Nailed Falafel with Tzatziki Slaw, Sesame Chicken Noodle Salad, and Minnie’s Meatballs

• One and Only Wednesday: One-pot meals such as Warm Hug Bacon Pasta, Salsa Verde Fish Tostadas, Mini-Van Pepperoni Pizza Chicken, and Spinach-Artichoke Rice & Bean Bake

• Thrifty Thursday: Dinners that use pantry staples, like Cook’s Secret Weeknight Beef Stew, Chicken & Rice Casserole for the Soul, Beth’s Sloppy Joe Casserole, and Clean Your Fridge Frittata

• Fri-Yay: Fun crowd-pleasers like Spicy Tuna Sushi Bake, Pimento Cheese Patty Melts, The BEST Fish & Chips, and Reuben Pastry Pockets

• Low and Slow Saturday: Hands-off slow cooker recipes such as French Onion Soup Pot Roast, Finger Lickin’ Good Sweet & Sour Ribs, and Not to Be Missed Moroccan Chickpea Apricot Stew
• Sunday Supper: Special meals to share, including Lobster Roll Cobb Salad, Pesto Rack of Lamb with Tomato-Mozzarella Salad, and Aunt Louise’s Eggplant Parmesan

• Sweet Tooth: Easy and nostalgic desserts like Babs’ Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies, Key Lime Icebox Cake, Caramel Apple Crisp, and Scotcheroos

No matter how you’re feeling by dinner, there is a recipe in here that will fit the bill. Your family will soon be part of the clean plate club and you will be considered a virtual magician in the kitchen, too! Don’t panic, it's easier than you think. Babs has you covered!

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Costello, known as BrunchwithBabs on social media, is a mother of four and grandmother of nine. Babs has taken the internet by storm with her warmth, enthusiasm, practical tips, and motherly wisdom, earning her the title of "the internet's favorite grandma." The bestselling author of Celebrate with Babs, she’s also a regular guest on Today, Good Morning America, and The Drew Barrymore Show, where she shares her household tips, tricks, hacks, and delicious recipes. A former teacher and preschool founder, she is also a wife to her loving husband, Mr. Babs.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

What's for Dinner?

My mother was a working mom long before it was generally accepted. I remember that, when we were living in my grandfather’s apartment building in Chicago in the 1950s, my mother would walk to Sears for her part-time job, so she could make extra money to buy my sister and me Christmas presents. Later, she went to beauty school and, after graduating, started working full-time as a hairdresser.

No matter how busy she was, she always had dinner on the table for us. She was a virtual magician, feeding her family really delicious dinners in the evening, even when she was out working most of the day. Looking back on those years, I sometimes wonder how she was able to do all that. My mother is part of a generation long gone, but I still have cherished memories of those meals together.

I also worked as I was raising my four children. Being a preschool teacher and director was more than a full-time job. “What’s for dinner?” was a question I had to have an answer for . . . every . . . night . . . of . . . the . . . week. At the time, I didn’t think of dinner duty as a chore; it was just part of my routine.

I had a weekly rotation of chicken dishes, naturally, but I also had pasta, pot roasts, and casseroles—like my spaghetti and meatballs, my Lipton onion soup mix and cream of mushroom pot roast, the tuna-noodle casserole, or my mother’s chicken and rice casserole. I cooked very tasty, very easy meals with no frills. When we sat down for dinner, we went to our designated seats. They weren’t assigned, but we just always sat in the same place. Mom and Dad were at the head and foot of the table, Bill and Shawn were on one side, and Erin and Elizabeth were on the opposite side. We were blessed to be able to gather around the table at the end of the day and share stories from school, work, church—basically whatever was going on in our lives at the time. Sometimes we had to really juggle to make family dinner happen, and when my kids got into serious sports, it wasn’t always achievable. That’s just how the seasons of life ebb and flow. We still tried our best to gather one day a week, usually Sunday. Now that my children are adults and out of the house, those times we were able to share dinner as a family are some of my fondest memories.

For so many of you, life is even more complicated now than it was for me back then. I see it with my grown children and grandchildren. Schedules are hectic; parents are working in and out of the home to keep the family afloat; kids are busy from morning until evening. It’s a lot!

I know that overwhelming feeling. Just remember that feeding your family is an art of the soul. It’s an extension of your love. The benefits of gathering your loved ones around the table and sharing a meal are endless.

And the good news is, you don’t have to do it alone. Every Day with Babs is here!

After the success of my first cookbook, Celebrate with Babs, which focused on family traditions and meals around holiday celebrations, many of my online family had a similar reaction: “Thanks, Babs! Now what do we do for every day? Help!”

With this book, think of me as your surrogate mom or grandma, helping you get delicious weeknight dinners organized, prepped, and on the table in no time, every night of the week. After many decades, I’ve learned all the shortcuts and tips. So, I’m sharing those here, as well as giving some tried-and-true classic recipes and some new favorites I’ve created along the way. All the mealtime ingenuity that has been passed down to me, or I’ve earned through trial and error, is now here in this book, for you! Your family will soon be part of the clean plate club, and you will be considered a virtual magician in the kitchen, too! Don’t panic, it’s easier than you think. I’ve got you covered!

—XO, Babs

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarkson Potter
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593797906
• ISBN 13: 9780593797907
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272