Dollars to Donuts: Comfort Food and Kitchen Wisdom from Route 66's Landmark Rock CafÃ

Which meals are best for your family? The kind that taste great, don't break the bank – and most importantly, don't keep you chained to the stove all day. As the sole proprietor of her own restaurant and busy wife and mother of two, Dawn Welch has perfected the art of cooking smart, using short-order strategies and a little bit of advance planning to rack up huge savings of time, money, and effort at home on a daily basis, and now you can, too.

These days everyone is keeping an eye on the bottom line, and Dawn is no different; she shares her best tips and tactics for stretching your food budget without giving up the favorite foods and special treats that make mealtime the best part of the day. Who wants to live on a steady diet of pasta and canned tuna? In Dollars to Donuts you'll find plenty of savvy ways to serve up steaks, seafood, even luscious chocolate desserts without letting costs spiral out of control. She also dishes up great ideas for transforming basic foods – baked ham, roast chicken, meatball mix – into sexy new offerings that no one will recognize as a leftovers and offers great advice on how to stock your pantry and freezer for last-minute drop-ins and impromptu entertaining.

Each recipe indicates cost per serving so you can choose the dishes that suit your budgetary needs, and a weekly meal planner helps streamline the process of pulling together menus and making the best use of your time and pantry. Icons throughout show which recipes are kid-friendly, which freeze like a dream, and much more.

Think cooking healthful, cost-effective, crowd-pleasing meals is beyond your reach? Take a page out of Dawn Welch's info-packed book and dollars to donuts, your family will be eating better than ever before and having more fun in the process!

Dawn Welch owns and operates Stroud, Oklahoma's famed Rock Café, a fixture on historic Route 66 since 1946. For over a decade loyal customers and visitors to Stroud have flocked to the Rock for Dawn's homespun specialties like chicken fried steak, peach cobbler, and oven-barbecued ribs. Devastated by a fire in the summer of 2008, the newly refurbished and expanded Rock reopened on Memorial Day, 2009.