Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats--A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners (A 30-Minute Meal Cookbook)

I own all of Rachael Ray's cookbooks with the exception of her original book that is impossible to find. I was anxiously awaiting the release of 365 No Repeats, as I knew it would be her biggest book yet, and I was excited to try new recipes. I love to cook, and I don't mind cooking elaborate recipes when necessary, but I have found that Rachael's recipes, which use real, whole food ingredients (not unhealthy, packaged ingredients like her FoodNetwork neighbor Sandra Lee), produce wonderful results in minimal time. This appeals to me in particular, as I am a vegan and my husband is a meat-and-potatoes man, so I often must cook two meals for the household. In fact, I get a bit annoyed by people who claim Rachael isn't a "real cook." If you've ever made any of her recipes, you'll soon learn that she has a wonderful understanding of how flavors mix, and she manages to create dishes using whole foods in 30 minutes without sacrificing taste or turning to boxes.I pre-ordered this book off of Amazon, and have made a number of the recipes - either for me or my husband - over the course of the past few weeks. All I can say is that each one of them was tasty and relatively quick to make (usually a 30-minute meal takes me 45-minutes, but I don't pre-wash my veggies/fruits, and I don't have my pantry as organized as Rachael's on the show!). There is a huge variety of recipes in this book - Italian, Greek, vegetarian, etc. - and I love the idea of teaching you the method for one recipe and then giving you alternate recipes to follow using that same method.The index of this book is wonderfully helpful (unlike some of her other books that lack a proper index), and the front of the book lists recipes in the book for various interests (e.g., vegetarian). I have only noticed a few repeats in this book from other RR products - the Florentine meatballs and Papa Al Pomodoro come to mind - but those are two of my family's favorite meals, anyway (make them together with the scotch/mushroom risotto in the book and you have a great and relatively inexpensive meal for entertaining that can accommodate vegans/vegetarians AND meat-eaters alike).Like someone else said below, I don't know how Rachael remains so upbeat and friendly and yet continues to be so prolific. Three shows on FoodNetwork, a magazine, cookbook after cookbook, and soon a talk show. Wow. I hope she continues to be so productive, however, because those who own her cookbooks certainly benefit from her hard work.A must for every kitchen.

`365: No Repeats' is the title of this book, however author Rachael Ray has reached the name over the title status about five books ago, which is not that long, as Ms. Ray seems to churn them out at the rate of about one every six months. While this book is titled over the '30 Minute Meal' rubric, it's primary premise is that it solves the problem of `what do we eat tonight' for a full (leap) year. The subtitle is `A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners'. One problem is that Rachael's secondary objective seems, on the face of it to soften the force of the `different dinners' claim.To me, Rachel's secondary message of providing several master recipes with variations, where each variation counts as one of the 365 recipes, is more interesting than the objective of providing you with something different every day of the year. In fact, my typical five stars for most of Rachael's books is based on this secondary objective rather than the culinary plenum year.The master recipe concept and the corresponding objective to make you more comfortable and more adept at cooking is really important to Rachael's message. One of her most important tactics is to minimize measuring to speed up cooking and simply make it less tedious and more fun. The problem is that you simply cannot estimate amounts effectively without a fair amount of experience. And, while Rachael gives us a few useful methods for estimating, they are probably less help than pulling out the old measuring spoons and using them until you have a good personal sense of how much a tablespoon or cup is. I find her equating a tablespoon with a palmfull and a quarter of a cup with a handful to be totally unhelpful on their own, without a picture to go along with the words. You may not feel this lack of sense if you watch Rachael daily or if you are already an accomplished amateur cook, but it definitely makes me think twice about recommending Ms. Ray's books to someone who must cook, but does not yet have cooking experience. If Ms. Rachael or her minions ever happen to read this review, I would suggest to them that they bite the bullet and go metric. There is no better method for estimating than to know off the top of your head that a teaspoon is 1/3 of a tablespoon and that a quarter of a cup is almost exactly four tablespoons and so on.One can wonder how Mrs. Rachael (she finally married her sweetie!) comes up with enough recipes to fill two books a year plus, now, to do a periodical under her brand name. She has left several hints here and there on how she manages to do this. In this book she clearly states that what she writes herself are usually loosely constructed notes which an editorial assistant (or Food Network culinary professional) turns into full-blown recipe. In an early '30 Minute Meal' show, I heard her say that she is an avid reader of old cookbooks, and I even recognize some of her dishes from some classic, and not very well known dishes, such as a Paula Wolfert standard of string beans and tomatoes.My first question about this book was whether or not Mrs. Ray repeated many recipes from her earlier books. I did find one where she stated that she borrowed from an earlier work, but I decided to check for myself and compared index entries in this book for chicken and burgers with indexes from her other books, where available, and I found virtually no repeats. There were a lot of similarities, but no exact copies. I am especially happy to see this, as there have been cookbook authors who have put out books which are simply nothing but reprints of earlier books.I rarely cook from Mrs. Ray's books myself, although I have been known to borrow some ideas from her shows in doing my own ad hoc recipe. Rachael is the culinary ambassador to the world of people who cook because they have to and do not necessarily want to take up cooking as a hobby, so they need someone to lay things out for them in simple, snappy terms. My only argument with her recipe write-ups is that she often puts a Teflon coated pan on a hot burner to heat up without adding any oil for several minutes. She does this on the show too, so I'm sure she is simply ignoring the dangers of doing this, in spite of frequent warnings from sometime mentor, Sara Moulton.So, if you have no Rachael Ray books and you fit the demographics of her audience, this is by far the best one to start with. And, if you own all her earlier titles, this will not be a rehash of what you have. The only regret you may have is that this book does not do full meals in 30 minutes like her earliest books, although I do believe the recipe writing is better in this book than it is in her '30 Minute Meal' book.Otherwise, many of the good things I have said about her earlier books is true of this title as well.

I like Rachael Ray, it took some time. The first time I saw her was on her daily talk show and in the beginning she was this annoying, loud woman who used too much oil and fat in her recipes. But she grew on me! Now I really like her. And her food looks so delicious on tv, so I had to get a book!I've had this book for two years, but didn't use it until recently. The reason? No pictures (well, there's a few on the pages in the middle, but just a handful, and there are 365 recipes in the book!) and odd ingredients (many of then you can't find in my country) Also buying all this stuff, like three different types of fresh herbs.. well it's costly! So I put the book away, got a job and never saw another episode of daytime tv again!A couple of years later on, I got the Scandinavian equal of Tivo, started taping Rachael Ray and was inspired again. I took out her book and started cooking, been going through a few recipes now and some of the dishes are just great! Love it! She does use a lot of foreign ingredients, so I have to skip some recipes and too many of them contain mushrooms (which I do not like) but I keep seeing Rachael Ray cooking and talking when I study the recipes which makes it all so much easier and fun! My only complaint now is that she could still have produced more photos AND I found out all the recipes are online on her website..I might some of the other books she has written in the future and I will definitely continue watching the show - and the cooking. If you like the show, her food and is confident enough to cook without seeing pictures of the final result, then this book is for you!

Rachel Ray writes great recipes

Bought as a gift - sister loved the variety!

looks like some yummy and different recipes to keep me inspired for the next year. Have just gotten so nothing cooked yet but am excited!

Die Rezepte sind ausführlich und abwechslungsreich.Klar, alles amerikanische Einheiten, aber das war bei einem amerikanischen Buch zu erwarten.Schade ist allerdings, dass keine Bilder in dem Buch sind. Gerade bei Kochbüchern lässt man sich doch gerne von schönen Fotos der Speisen inspirieren.

Awesome book.

good tips