Great recipes using common ingredients. The recipes give portions for various amounts, which is helpful, and instructions are broken down into Freezing Day and Serving Day. My husband has like every meal I've made from this book!

I had moderate hopes for this guide and cookbook. However, the recipes are fairly blah. The freezing instructions make sense, but are largely just gloss and can be found on the internet for free. Also, there are very few recipes in the book. I'm not saying that the book is bad or poorly written: it's simply not good. My final complaint: Don't Panic.. has too much brand name dropping and product placement. We've already paid for the book; quit shoving brands in our faces.

Before becoming a stay at home mother, I was employed for four years as a chef. I have seen a lot of cookbooks come and go. Most had a few good ideas and a handful of useful recipes. This cookbook is incredible.
It has a lot of "regular people food" in it. The sort of stuff that is not too boring nor too fancy. Just basic and very good recipes. It is perfection.
In addition, the authors did conversions in case you want to prepare larger quantities (great for parties or larger families).
I purchased this cookbook because I was looking for recipes I could prepare ahead of time. I wanted recipes that went beyond the standard and unhealthy casserole variety. This book has what I wanted.
I use this book so often, it never gets returned to the shelf.

We love this book. We used to do Dream Dinners before we moved to Iowa. We liked Dream Dinners, but find this book even better. The Lemony Flank Steak and Oriental Chicken were a huge hit. My husband loves these recipes.

I thought this book would provide good recipes for complete meals you can prepare ahead and freeze. It is recipes you sort of do half way and freeze and then you still have to thaw and finish cooking when you want to make them. To me that is just making a mess and dirtying pans twice for no apparent reason. I wanted ideas for good homemade frozen dinners my hubby can pull and reheat for he and our daughters while I am away on business trips.

There are some good recipes here, most require up to an hour plus thawing to "finish" the night you want to use them.

This book provides quick and easy recipes that do taste good when thawed and cooked. A must have for anyone on the go.

I love this book. I tried one or two others and they just don't compare. The meals are delicious and easy to make. My husband is very picky and difficult to cook for, but he loves everything I've made from it. Other books have you cook twice, once to prepare the meal before freezing and then again when you're ready to serve it. This one has many raw meals, so you prepare the seasoning/sauce and freeze it all then you only cook it on the day you are ready to eat. Very easy to use with great info and tips on safe and effective freezing.

This book is well written and easy to follow. The food is really delicious and the idea is great. You can make the meals for your own future use or for someone else to use as needed. They take up very little room in the freezer which is a plus too.

I have tried several different freezer meal books and this is by far the best. I have made no less than 10 different recipes and they have all tasted wonderful! I love the variety of the recipes. The directions are clear and accurate. Of course it does help to have some basic cooking knowledge first. I would highly recommend this book.

This book was helpful. I don't like that you have to get a lot of the recipes "ready" and still have to go home & cook them for an hour or so-that to me is not a timesaver. Overall there were some helpful ideas, recipes, and even baked desserts!

Only made a few dinners from this book. Way too much time and effort goes into preparing before freezing. Not what I had in mind. Dream Dinners is still much more time sensitive and more cost savings for me...

Has a lot of good recipes in it. I prefer this much more than I do the Dream Dinners book. There is a great variety of recipes and some that I never would have though of. The recipes are made up so that you can have one for dinner tonight and make enough for two, three, or six more nights. Having the dinner in the freezer really helps when you have those kind of days. Would definately recommend this book over the Dream Dinners one.

This cookbook has wonderful recipes that your whole family will love! They are easy to follow and taste great!
If you are looking for a more detailed book about what OAMC is all about though I would do some research elsewhere. This book has great recipes but isn't detailed with grocery lists like other books are.
They do have an awesome system of how to increase servings though and I highly recommend these recipes!

I love this book. I have tried several recipes already and my family likes them. The charts to increase the recipes x 3, x6, x9 are very useful. I would suggest trying the recipe once before making multiples to make sure you like it. I would agree with another review that there are not many vegetarian recipes and half of the book is meat recipes. I also like the tips on how to freeze items without freezer burn and maximizing freezer space. If you are looking for a book to start with making multiple meals and freezing, this is the one.

I am really glad I finally decided to buy this cookbook. I have an 8 month old and was trying to come up with a way to improve our dinners at night during the week. The recipes are easy (although, in retrospect, make sense to do...marinating, etc.) but overall it makes it really nice to have something you can do that is yummy without a lot of effort. We have made, and frozen, several of the items and it is working out great.

I love this book! Great, easy to follow recipes and so perfect for meals on those nights you just don't feel like preparing a meal! Perfect for taking a meal to a sick friend, one who's had a baby, etc. I have to say that my husband isn't picky at all and he disliked a couple of the recipes, so try them out before you take one to a friend to see what you like! I love the way they let me know exactly how to prepare the meal prior to freezing it--that made it even more simple to do! THANKS!

This cookbook is amazing! I usually get so excited when buying a cookbook and then end up disappointed when the food/recipes are mediocre. This cookbook has great recipes to freeze ahead of time-- not limited to casseroles like so many. We are a dual working household, so meal planning is a must. This cookbook makes it easy and you don't have to compromise on food quality or flavor. Not all the recipes are as easy as crockpot meals, but they do allow for a lot of time saving the night of since so much of the legwork is done in advance.

Wanted to rate this 3 1/2 stars.

This book has a good selection of make ahead entrees, as well as some appetizers, sides, and desserts to go with them.

I am surprised by several of the comments complaining that you have to cook some ingredients first--even in your typical TV dinner, some or all of the ingredients are cooked prior to freezing (just one example is pre-baking a pie crust).
Also, you don't necessarily need to thaw completely before cooking, especially for things like cookie dough--you could just add on some cooking time (you will have to adjust for this, because the authors don't)--or you cook the entire item through, let cool, THEN freeze in individual or family-size portions for later. Part of the reason things turn out mushy when they're reheated is that they weren't sealed properly when frozen--a vacuum sealer can keep out the ice crystals. Also, regarding blandness of recipes, freezing decreases the taste of spices, so you do have to adjust for that when freezing, or add spices during or right after cooking.

Cons: too many recipes using convenience foods (canned "cream-of" soups, for example), although you can substitute healthier versions for some of them. Also, the binding is the type that lies flat, but the copy I borrowed from the library is just this side of having the pages fall out. There's no excuse for cheap binding in a book, and especially a cookbook.

A decent book to go with Super Suppers.

The recipes in here are so useful and practical! I LOVE that it gives the measurements/quantities for increasing the number of servings - so no calculations on my part! LOVE THIS BOOK!

Love this book, the recipes are good. I cook for a month with a friend and for other families so we use alot of recipes. We have several other of this type of book and I'd say we use more recipes out of this book than any other. The only thing that I would like to see in this book is pictures. But I have to say that out of the four books we use only two have pictures: one of those (Freezer Friendly Meals)only has pictures for about half the recipes and the other (Super Suppers) is falling apart, the binding is really cheap.

I think this book is great. After reading all the reviews about freezer meals that is what made me purchase this one. Easy meals and good too. My family REALLY like the ones I have made so far. I don't think you can really save money doing this but it sure saves on time and the hassel of "Whats for dinner?". I now have a friend wanting to borrow my book and see what she thinks of it before she buys it. I highly recommend this book.

I just got this cookbook for Xmas and I have already used it several times! The recipes are easy and do not include exotic ingredients. The book explains exactly how to freeze things for best quality. Highly recommend!!!

This is a very good book that gives helpful suggestions on how to prepare meals (or portions of meals) ahead of time and store them in your freezer in easy, space-saving ways. Good for people who have the ability to buy meats in bulk. It definitely takes some time out of your day to prepare all of the meals/meats ahead of time. But, then, it saves you a LOT of time the rest of the month as you are preparing dinner. You don't have to have a lot of freezer space to do some of this either. The meals/meats can be placed in freezer bags and layed flat on top of each other. Saves a lot of room! There are a lot of great recipes in this book. I have enjoyed using it very much. Sturdy and eye-appealing. Highly recommend.

This is a great cookbook. The idea is not to cook once a month or even once a week but to cook one meal at three servings- one for tonight and two to freeze. It is amazing how quickly the dinners build up in your freezer.

The recipes in this cookbook are easy to prepare, good to eat and the directions are clear and easy. There are directions for cooking, freezing, reheating. There is nothing in the way of unusual ingredients. You will most likely have all of the ingedients on hand or they are easy to find at the grocery store.

Wonderful idea and great book.

The day I bought this book I looked through and picked recipes I wanted to make, and then went to the grocery store to buy the ingredients I needed. The next day I went to work preparing 30 meals. This book has great recipes. I have tried over 10 of them now. The cranberry chicken had great reviews so I tried it too..and it is so good, as is the pumpkin chocolate chip muffins (which also had rave reviews). My family also loved the continental beef, shredded salsa beef, chicken breasts stuffed with pesto butter and lemon glazed chicken, just to name a few.
This book even gives you some information on shopping, supplies, and freezing tips.
My only gripe about the book is that there is no pictures beyond the front cover. I like to see what my dish is supposed to look like finished. Others may also want to know that there are NO seafood recipes in this book. That didn't bother me as I do not like seafood, but it may bother those who like it.
I recommend this book to anyone that is sick of trying to come up with ideas for dinner the day of. You can make as little or as many meals ahead as you like. The book also has charts to show you how to multiply the recipe x3, x6 , x9 etc. So no more trying to figure out the measurements yourself.
The recipes in this book are from basic (making marinades, adding meats, freeze) to more complex (cooking, browning, freezing). So far I haven't found anything that to much of a pain to do.
If your thinking of doing freezer meals this book is it. It's great for those who have never done this before.

The philosophy of this book is to prepare large meals and freeze what you don't plan on using that day. If you are looking for lots of instructions on preparing and freezing all your meals for the month (in one day) then you should buy 30 Day Gourmet, but keep in mind that many of the recipes will ask for `cream of X soup.'

If you are looking for recipes with Beef or Poultry, or Breads and Desserts this is the book for you. Within that context there is a variety of meals, but don't expect a whole lot past that. You will not find a single seafood recipe and only a small handful of vegetarian recipes. The authors mention to customize the recipes to your family's liking and that should explain why you won't find them extremely flavorful. Though I haven't dug deep into this book yet, I am looking forward to trying some of the recommended recipes from other readers. The recipes are simply stated and get to the point on freezing them. There is not a single picture in the book.

I was expecting to find a good selection of tasty freezer meals with many tips and tricks on selecting and preparing them. Although many of their tips are common knowledge they do have some I hadn't heard of before; like get to know your butcher, or exactly how to freeze a prepared casserole that you've interracially put together. I was surprised to find that the cover helped the book open flat even though it wasn't spiral bound.

I would also like to mention that the index is poorly organized. For instance, you should expect to find all the poultry dishes under the Poultry heading; however some are found under Pasta & more, some under Soups. I also think books are misleading when they start counting pages with context from the first blank page to the last blank page. Yes there are 240 pages, but only 145 recipes (many not recommended for freezing!), so there are just fewer than 100 pages that are either fillers (nine pages of instructions) or just plain blank!

I am new to the whole prepping dinner ahead philosphy but I am a believer with this cookbook!

The recipes we have tried are great whether you make them right away or freeze them. My husband is super picky and it got his seal of approval.

Our personal favorite is the Chicken Parisienne, we have made it over and over again. There is always at least one batch in the freezer so it can be thrown in the crockpot in the morning and we have a delicious meal without the fuss!

I bought this book because I wanted to mimic the recipes used by Dream Dinners and other make-ahead and freeze recipes. I expected to assemble raw ingredients for freezing and instructions on how to cook at a later time. This book is more about how to cook recipes in their entirety, and then freeze for later consumption.

I have a deployed spouse and two young children. I love this book. I can cook whenever I get a chance and then freeze into small portions. I would recommend a cooking co-op with friends. Double or triple the batch and then do a meal swap. For instance if I had three friends and tripled the recipe then we swap and now I have three different meals from the one that I made. This also has a great section for appetizers if your hosting a party, a section for drinks you can make ahead such as frozen punches, teas etc. It is worth any price!!!!

I've cooked a few of the recipes from this book and they have turned out so much better than expected!! This is by far the best freezer cookbook I have ever used...not your average recipes that you will find in some freezer cookbooks. Great tips for freezing. Fantastic book for any busy mom. I first borrowed it from our local library, and I just purchased one for my own today.
The chicken tortilla soup, and the barb-b-q chicken pizza were excellent!

A friend reveiwed a similar book Dream Dinners: Turn Dinnertime into Family Time with 100 Assemble-and-Freeze Meals and as I read those reviews here on amazon, I came across this book. It was a pleasant suprise. The freezing tips were great, although I had heard of some, it was nice to have some more. It if full of great recipes too - Our family is enjoying this book!

Some nice ideas, but how come nobody can seem to come up with a book on tasty low refined carb/low fat freezer meals that have nutritional information on them?

This book has easy recipes! They taste wonderful and are cinch to prepare for cooking and/or the freezer! I love the cranberry chicken the best!

Highly recommend!

I have always been a cooking enthusist and cook dinner almost everynight. The problem came when I recently went from being single to married with two kids. Cooking for four, all with different tastes, became a real challenge. My husband and I have a little more mature taste that the kids don't always like. This book is a life saver for me. It's great to be able to make a big batch of food that I know the kids will eat, and have it in the freezer for those nights I cook something they don't like. The only dislike to the book is that the recipes are pretty basic and not very health conscious. I do love the book because it's shown me how to freeze food so it will last longer. Overall, I'd recommend this book.

It is a fantastic cookbook. All the recipes taste great and are easy to make. They have wonderful ideas on how to cook, freeze and store food.

We have tried several recipes from this book. All have been excellent. Even the baby loved them! Assembly is fairly easy and very well explained. The book is very well laid out, ingredients are already multiplied out for how ever many servings you want to make.

This book is excellent. There are many ideas for frozen meals that do not involve mushroom soup or casserole dishes, and the author lays out various methods for freezing food that result in maximum efficiency and ease of preparation when you finally decide to eat them! I have found the first chapter of this book very helpful no matter what recipe you decide to use, hers or others from other sources. A worthwhile purchase.

Say goodbye to boring recipes. This book as an amazing variety of entres, and many have a gourmet taste and appearance without bizarre, hard-to-find ingredients.

The best things about this book:

1) A very practical freezer method using bags instead of baking dishes or plastic containers. By using the freezer bags and "flash freezing" the food into various, stackable shapes, you can maximize your freezer space and make cooking or reheating the food easier later.

2)The majority of the dishes aren't cooked at all until after you defrost them. This makes them taste incredibly fresh on the day you serve them. You simply assemble them before hand, then freeze them in order to cook them later.

3) This method of cooking definitely saves time. By preparing multiple meals at once, you dramatically reduce your overall preparation time. Furthermore, you've got the convenience of getting a meal out of your freezer the night before, letting it defrost in your fridge, and then simply letting the oven do the cooking or reheating while you tend to your children, chores, or work.

4) Buying "loss leaders" on sale at the grocery store and cooking them in bulk really does save money!

5) The variety of recipes.

6) The flexibility. The author encourages you to change up the recipes according to your family's tastes and package them according to your family's size.

The worst things about this book:

1) It should be spiral bound so it can lie flat.

2) I'm a lover of free-range, grass-fed, antibiotic-free, hormone-free meats. Finding my type of meat on sale is rare, and buying it already cut (i.e. chicken breasts) is usually never cheap. Most of the chicken recipes call for breasts. A few can be adapted to use shredded chicken (what I've got if I buy the chicken whole from farmers), but most cannot. Perhaps I should just learn how to properly butcher a chicken.

This cookbook is great! It has so many different meal ideas and the book tells you exactly how to freeze everything. It also tells you what you need to do on the day that you serve it. It is great.

I purchased 4 cookbooks for freezer meals and this is THE BEST by far. The recipes are very tasty and there are many quality meals to choose from.

After trying two sessions with Dream Dinners, I decided to try a similar method "on my own." I have already made at least five of the recipes...all are really good! Clear directions and the books and suggestions really help with meal planning!

I like this book because it is laid out clearly, the recipes included are simple but good, and their is a good amount of diversity in the recipes offered. I do wish the author had included nutritional information for the recipes, though, as I follow Weight Watchers and this information is a necessity for me. This is a "Must" in any collection of assemble-and-freeze cookbooks.

This cookbook lives up to its name! A must have for busy families....

This weekend I spent a few hours making 15 dinners from four recipes (I will try a few more recipes next weekend. The Very Best Meatloaf recipe is GREAT, and I will try the rest this week.

What I love about this book are the meat entrees. Like others have mentioned, a lot of the recipes are simply meats and chicken in different sauces and marinades, but this works for this book because these meals are meant to be frozen - being frozen in a sauce means no freezer-burned meat!

A big plus to this book is the first section before the recipes. The informational chapters are very helpful. In particular, "The Don't Panic Method of Cooking", "Cooking Day Suggestions", "Packaging and Freezing the Goods", and "How Long Will it Keep?"

I LOVE the recipe size conversions that are given for all of the freezer recipes. The original recipes make either 4, 6, or 8 servings (depending on the recipe), and most of the conversions are for 3x, 6x, or 9x the recipe.

Some recipes that I thought looked great include: Rocky Mountain Brisket & BBQ Sauce, Rio Rancho Taco Meat, Pork Chops a la Orange, Pinwheel Flank Steak, Dijon Pork Loin Roast, Oriental Sesame CHicken Strips, Lemon Glazed Chicken Breasts, Italian Stuffed Chicken Breasts, Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Pesto Butter, Buttermilk Herb Chicken, Lemon Bread, Orange Sour Cream Loaf (bread), crumb cake, and much more! (hey! no canned soups in any of these recipes!!)

I held back a star only because I would have liked to have seen more freezable side recipes (most of the sides can only be prepared on the day of the meal, but honestly, I usually just cook an easy Lipton/Knorr pasta package and heat some frozen veggies to accompany dinner.

I really think that you can't go wrong with this cook book, unless you have a special dietary need. If you are looking for low-fat recipes, be prepared to make recipe substitutions.

I cook in bulk and freeze on a regular basis, keep an inventory list on top of my freezer, decide what we are eating the next day and defrost in the fridge the night before. This particular book gives a nice organization to how to purchase in bulk for cooking. The dinners are very tasty and quite simple to prepare. Most freezer cookbooks have a lot of cream of mushroom soup type ingredients and the entrees are largely casseroles. Not this book! This book has a great variety of recipes with higher quality ingredients. The recipes from this book taste fresher than many have made from other freezer cookbooks. I prefer to do prep work (chopping veggies, shredding cheese, etc the night before) and then it's easy to follow these recipes and make several recipes in one day. I spent 4 hours on Sat. and froze 23 meals for my family of 4. Though the format is generally for a family of 4, I have smaller Pyrex casserole dishes with plastic lids and freeze each recipe in half - for 2, and then I can take out more when needed. It's easy to figure out how to make healthier choices in ingredients (fat free salad dressing or less cheese). Complaints? The binding broke on first use. A spiral bound book would be so much better. Also, it would be nice if nutritional information was included. Lastly, there could more side dishes to freeze (most are "make on the day you serve") since it is a freezer cookbook and most of the meals are entrees which would almost require a side dish or two.

I read tons of reviews online before ordering this book to try and save on cooking time. I was very disappointed in the recipes. Many of the ingredients are unhealthy and not what I would prepare for my family. I guess each person's idea of healthy cooking is different but I would definitley look through this book in a store before deciding to order it.

This book has some really great recipes that are not at all difficult to follow. The proportions are ideally for families of 4 or more, but I have found it relatively easy to reduce the recipes for just my husband and I plus a night of leftovers. I have also used it for dinners with friends, and have had very good results. I'm not so sure I'd ever belong to the type of co-op where the folks get together and cook up a month of meals and freeze them in huge quantities, but it is definitely full of wonderful recipes and I would recommend it to anyone who has basic cooking skills.

Two to try: Beef Chimichangas and Chicken Cacciatore

Perhaps my expectations were too high. The recipes look good and they will probably be ones that my family will like. But why do I hesitate to spend a weekend making and preparing meals to freeze? Because most of them are covered with sauce and require defrosting. When I saw the title of this book I thought it would be a big timesaver--going from freezer to the oven. But my thinking is: if I have to plan time for defrosting...I might as well make it the same day and eat it right away. Why waste another day preparing (not to mention extra time bagging and/or finding containers for food)when it will only take as much time (or more) to defrost it as it did to prepare it???

I am a huge fan of Supper Suppers. Though I do not have that book because I'd rather just get those meals locally already made, I was looking for cook book with that same concept where I could make a couple of freeze and store meals via an "assembly line" with fresh, raw ingredients and then throw them in the freezer. Though all the meals I have prepared from this book so far have tasted good, I was disappointed with this purchase for 2 reasons. First, MANY of the recipes require partial (or full) cooking before storing/freezing. This is supposed to make my life easier and now I have to cook twice? That's not so helpful. Second, a number of the recipes required processed ingredients like "canned soup." That was also not so appealing. A number of recipes were not even designed for storing, just designed to be quick meals or sides. If I wanted quick, I'd stick to any of Rachel Ray's books - which are all great - no canned soup there. On the positive side, the vast majority of ingredients were readily available and they give you several options for multiplying recipes. This is great because I hate math. Overall, this book was OK but not quite what I had expected.

not your typical make a head cook book, great meals with a twist.