Burros explains how to trim shopping time to 10 minutes per day (by keeping staples on hand, shopping daily for each menu, buying hard-to-find food through mail order) and suggests buying pre-cut vegetables at salad bars and meats and fish in trimmed and packaged form. Following current diet trends, low-fat chicken and fish dishes are emphasized; cream sauces are made with ricotta and yogurt. Salt is decreased by seasoning food with herbs, ethnic condiments and flavored oils and vinegars. Sensibly, menus often combine the required starch, protein and vegetable components of a meal into one or two dishes, but leafy greens are lacking, and white sugar is used unnecessarily in dressings and tomato sauces.

Each menu includes simple recipe instructions and shopping lists. The title sounds too good to be true, but most of the menus in Burros's latest collection can be prepared in 20 minutes.

And, although she relies on salad bar ingredients to save time, she has not had to resort to any "convenience" foods for these simple, healthy, and tasty dishes. A game plan and shopping list accompanies each meal. Any busy cook would find this book handy, and Burros's unintimidating, speedy menus could even make cooks of noncooks.

 Simon & Schuster 0-671-62390-7 / 9780671623906
Hardcover As New Condition 

Price: 12.25 USD