Cookbooks have had a way of making dinner sound complicated since first being etched on stone slabs in Babylon in 1500 BC. For hundreds of years cookbooks have been treasured as a link to home and family as a way of passing on heritage meals and family favorites. In medieval times, make shift cookbooks (often cryptic notes scribbled on fabric or hide) also provided recipes for healing, as well as preparing meals, and the act of cooking to feed the hungry and heal the sick went hand- in- hand ( we always knew chicken soup was good for something besides being tasty!) While cookbooks have long been treasured links to our past, they are also notorious for complicated sounding recipes with long preparation times that just don’t work for families on the run in today’s world.

A boom of cookbooks produced for homemaking women in the 1940’s and 50’s,offered recipes with elaborate lists of ingredients and lengthy preparation times (which left little time for cleaning, ironing and putting on makeup and a new dress before your husband came home!). Some staples of everyday eating during these times like; baking bread, canning, making butter and pie crusts, were lengthy tasks which we now- thank goodness- can rely on Pillsbury and Green Giant to take care of. Granted, cookbooks have come a long way since their early years without measured ingredients or preparation instructions, but even many modern cookbooks still demand a large commitment of time and grocery shopping to prepare even basic recipes.

As long as a hearty meal has been the most anticipated time of day, there have been cookbooks to show us the way. However, if you don’t really have the time to churn your own butter or roast a leg or lamb with mint and rosemary ( which you first must plant, cultivate and pick from your own garden), you might need a better way to find great recipes for your busy family.

For most busy moms, life is so hectic that actually using a recipe out of a book is more of a novelty than actuality. Is it really likely that we’ll take the time to pull a cookbook down from the shelf, blow off the dust and finger through the ignored pages in search of a recipe which lists 20 ingredients and 3 hours to prepare? Um…no. Today’s women need fast recipes. Meals that can be prepared while conducting homework, feeding the dog and running out the door to soccer practice are a necessity for many of today’s families.

Luckily, moms who are die-hard cookbook lovers, or who just need to cook everyday and need to get out of a meal-rut, can find a cookbook that will do more than look dusty on a shelf by purchasing one that is geared towards easy, fast recipes. Those which offer meals that can be made in less than an hour, while utilizing only a few (instead of 20 or more) ingredients, can offer a variety of tasty meals for busy families. Online recipe Websites and menu planning guides and kits also offer refreshing options for fast cooking. And, while cookbooks authored by celebrity chefs often look tempting (yum!), the recipes can sometimes be lengthy and geared toward restaurant cooking, not home cooking. Visiting the Website if the chef/author instead, often offers faster, easier recipes.