Meal prep without burnout! Transform leftovers from each meal into a fresh new dish and put a home-cooked dinner on the table every night with 100-plus recipes and 15 easy weekly menus, in this first cookbook by Cyndi “Hyacinth” Kane, often seen on Ree Drummond’s hit Food Network show and blog, The Pioneer Woman.
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!
Cyndi Kane (also known widely as “Hyacinth,” Ree Drummond’s best friend) has homeschooled her four children for nearly twenty years and has always had a side hustle of some sort—founder of a homeschool community, radio talk show host, entrepreneur. Her busy life necessitated a streamlined dinner regimen, so her expedited cooking methods were borne out of need (or desperation!). Cyndi’s and Ree’s families are “fifth-generation friends,” following in the footsteps of their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents-in-law; she is featured in Ree’s book Little Ree: Best Friends Forever!, has appeared at least a dozen times on Ree’s Food Network show The Pioneer Woman, and is frequently featured in The Pioneer Woman magazine on thepioneerwoman.com. Cyndi also founded an e-commerce site www.houseofhyacinth.com, where she partners with influencers to design, manufacture, and sell kitchen and tabletop accessories. She lives in Pawhuska and Oklahoma City, where her husband, John, is a Supreme Court Justice for the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Ree Drummond is the author of eight New York Times bestselling cookbooks in the Pioneer Woman Cooks series, the New York Times bestsellers Frontier Follies and The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels, and many bestselling children’s books. Her award-winning website, The Pioneer Woman, was founded in 2006, and her top-rated cooking show, The Pioneer Woman, premiered on Food Network in 2011. In the years that followed, Ree launched The Pioneer Woman Magazine, a well-loved line of kitchen and home products at Walmart, and a restaurant, bakery, store, and other businesses in her hometown of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. She lives on a working ranch with her husband, Ladd, and her adult kids, sons-in-law, and new granddaughter all come home for family meals whenever they can!
