The Frugal Foodie Cookbook: 200 Gourmet Recipes for Any Budget

Questionable Math
There’s a pretty good variety of foods in here, although I personally only found a handful of recipes to my taste that I don’t already have. I recommend flipping through this before you invest in it, because if you’re looking for “frugal” ideas you’re likely to be disappointed. I don’t know where the authors shop, but even in season I’d be unlikely at best to find the ingredients they list for the prices cited; that’s assuming I already had a good collection of spices on hand and didn’t count them in the pricing.

They could’ve put more effort into it
I can’t find a single interesting recipe in this book. There are no pictures, which to me, is important because it’s good to see how your dish is ‘supposed’ to look. The dessert section is huge, while the poultry section is very small. Don’t waste the $10 on this book. Instead, spend less. Spend $6 on The Poor Girl Gourmet which is a MUCH better cookbook with cheaper meals and a MUCH better layout. Not only does it have glossy pictures and pages, but there are cooking hints and tips. Overall, I felt that the Frugal Foodie was just a thrown together book for these two college kids to make a buck.

A Cookbook Filled With Typos & Errors
When I first bought this book I thought it would add some new recipes. And for the most part they sound good, but what really irratates me about this cookbook is the errors and typos throughout the book. I get the whole concept of blogging and making a cookbook about your most popular recipes, but, apparently they could not afford a proofreader.I made the Orange Tofu recipe (which is delicious – my tofu hating fiance gobbled it right up & went back for seconds!) But, when preparing it I noticed the recipe called for lemon zest, but the ingredient list called specifically for orange zest. But, this was not the first typo I encountered – another recipe, the Italian Bean with Escarole soup, called for 1/2 cup of olive oil, 5 cups of chicken broth, a 1/2 pound of maccaroni, 2 bunches of escarole, 2 cans of white kidney beans. Well, if you follow the recipe in the book, you end up with a bunch of white kidney beans, escarole, and maccaroni and enough broth for 2 average sized soup bowls.If you buy this cookbook, beware, you will have to adjust and make notes to tweak the recipes for the next time.

Nothing much new or interesting
but then I’ve been a frugal scratch cook for decades. I was hoping for some new ideas but I didn’t find them here. I’m glad I bought this book from a library donation sale so I only wasted a dollar plus the time I took to read it.