The Dinner Doctor - Softcover

The doctor's back, and now she's curing dinner woes! Anne Byrn, the award-winning food writer and author of The Cake Mix Doctor and Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor does for dinner what she did for dessert-shows how to take common, convenient supermarket ingredients and turn them into meals that taste like they're made from scratch. Making excellent use of the Crock-Pot and other labor-saving appliances, incorporating hundreds of shortcuts and tips, and cooking from a pantry of prepared foods--whether canned, frozen, jarred, dried, or fresh from the salad bar--the Dinner Doctor shows how to make over 200 fast and kid-friendly appetizers, salads, soups, sides, and main courses. Take, for example, a can of tuna, and think outside the sandwich: Add beans, tomato, and a vinaigrette, and it becomes a Tuscan Tuna and White Bean Salad. Turn that healthy mixture into a pasta salad with the addition of cooked penne. And make a speedy pasta supper by tossing the salad with sauteed zucchini and a generous shower of shredded Parmesan. Or, whip up a Tuna Noodle Casserole like mom used to make-but faster and healthier by lightening the traditional cream of mushroom soup with lemon juice and lowfat milk and using precooked pasta and frozen peas. There are dozens of ways to doctor deli-counter basics into stunning hors d'oeuvres. Five quick casserole toppers. Five zippy garlic breads and 30 ways to dress up frozen peas and frozen spinach. And the 15s--15 cold pasta sauces, 15 ways to doctor deli chicken, 15 meals made from summer tomatoes, and more.

The doctor's at it again—and never has a deli chicken tasted so good.

Serve Wow! for dinner tonight. Sharing hundreds of inventive ideas and tips, the Dinner Doctor shows how to transform convenient supermarket foods, Cinderella-like, into meals that are downright delicious. Coastal Shrimp and Tomato Rice, Five-Minute Gazpacho, Asian Chicken Salad, Savory Pork Carnitas, Frozen Mud Pie, and a baker's dozen of brand-new Cake Mix Doctor cakes—in all, over 230 kid-pleasing, plate-cleaning, ask-for-seconds appetizers, soups, salads, main courses, sides, and desserts.