Fab Find Friday: Everyday Food Magazine

* Disclosure: I was not compensated in anyway. I have been a charter member of this magazine since it was started, see the picture FTC all those are mine, bought with my own money. The cookbook was a gift, from my MOM. This opinions are all my own.

Why do I love Everyday Food?

Fast: Most recipes are 30-40 minutes making them fabulous for weeknight meals.

Few: Each recipe usually has around 5-8 ingredients, and they are staples or easily found at your standard grocery store.

Fresh: I love that the recipes are in season, with readily available produce.

Easy: Easy for an undomestic non-cook like myself to follow and make.

Tasty: We have not tried a recipe that we didn't like. Even my foodie husband who loves to cook authentic has been suprised by how things like the Easy Italian Meat Sauce taste authentic, without the many ingredients and time.

Pictures: There are pictures of every recipe. Important for people like me so I know what it should look like. Even better because my kids love picking out recipes based on the pictures.

Mostly, I love it because my family eats better because of it.

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So the above is what I am going to submit for the Why I love Everyday Food contest. However I was limited to 150 words and had planned this post before I saw the contest. If you are even a casual visitor here, you probably know I can't keep anything short and sweet and the constraints of a word limit made me start hyperventilating!

I really do love Everyday Food. That really is my bookshelf. I have every issues ever printed since the very first issue in 2003. I have referred to it plenty on this site, but also to every single person I know. I have even given subscriptions as gifts, I just might be a super fan (or super annoying!).

We eat dinner as a family most nights of the week, we usually don't miss more than one night. People are always amazed and want to know what we eat. I remember sitting at a playgroup and the mom was like, "but what do you make?' I said "the kids eat what we eat". Her response, "what do you eat? how do you make 7 meals a week?" My answer EVERYDAY FOOD!

Meal planning is the only way I can stay on grocery budget and participate in cooking dinner. I am a horrible cook and cannot just throw things together. I need recipes. My husband and I usually sit down with at least 2 Everyday Food's and the local ads once a week to plan our menu.

Here is this week's menu:

Sunday: Pork Roast with Roasted Apples, because my son DEVOURS this. Hubby adapted it from a Martha Stewart recipe. This was a huge roast that we got on sale for real cheap and cut into 3 pieces for 3 dinners.

Monday: Empanadas - we had a lot of ground beef (super sale!) and wanted to try something different, we remembered seeing this and wanting to try it. It was one of the more labor intensive recipes and probably would have been better on a weekend (for us). But it was SO TASTY! It also made enough that I either have 4 lunches or another dinner in the freezer, always a plus when you are trying to stretch your grocery budget.

Our empanada filling cooling on the porch

Tuesday: Cornflake Crusted Chicken You can tell this is a favorite recipe by the page in the book covered with food! My kids LOVE it (our trick is that we leave the pepper out, cover two pieces for them than add the pepper. It's bland for them and there is an extra kick for us!). They even help make it:

Peanut helps crush the cornflakes, ignore the un-manicured nails!

Wednesday: Fish and Chips- it was a one parent night, we went store bought

Thursday: Was another one parent night, we made Trader Joe's 13 bean soup and Take and Bake bread.

Friday: We will be making pasta, for lent. Hubby makes it loosely based on a recipe from Classic Pasta Cookbook {affiliated link}.

Saturday: Pizza Night

So we don't make every meal fresh, and we don't make every meal out of Everyday Food, but if you want start making more meals, if you want to try new foods (a favorite of ours is the "Have you tried" section) or learn some basics on both food and cooking, I would highly recommend Everyday Food.

But wait! There's more! Not only are they a fabulous (did I mention purse size?) magazine, they have a great website with easy recipe search, they have a blog, and they Tweet (daily recipes for dinner!).

Will be Linked up with this weeks What's on your table? Sunday at: