Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm not quite sure what to make of this little book. I expected to like it a lot more than I do, given what is presented as the underlying concept: "... the best things on the table are just basic recipes with a little twist." The entire introduction is about taking a favorite basic recipe and coming up with variations on it so that once you know the basic recipe, the rest is easy. Yeah, not so much. There is NO set of "basic recipes" from which the "variations" are derived. There's a set of recipes, yes -- but I can't really find any relationship among any of them that would be representative of the theme of "mix and match." As an example, there are 3 recipes for meatballs: Pesto Meatballs (page 33), Cheeseburger Meatballs (page 45), and Pizza Meatballs (page 115). The recipes bear no resemblance to each other except for the use of ground beef. Two of them use panko breadcrumbs, one doesn't. And of the two that use breadcrumbs, one uses 1/2 C for 1 lb of ground beef, the other uses 1 C. If the concept is basic recipes with variations, I would expect more similarities. OK, so the concept and content are a mismatch. How about the recipes themselves? Let's look at a few: 1) Beef Enchiladas -- ground beef, onion, chopped black olives, cheddar cheese, tortillas, canned enchilada sauce, and ... canned cream of mushroom soup? Really? Why? (no other seasoning, either). 2) Sweet Potato Shepherd's Pie -- ground beef, onion, canned cream of mushroom soup, frozen peas and carrots, mashed sweet potatoes, olive oil/salt/pepper. Again with the cream of mushroom soup. And again, no other seasoning. 3) Coconut Crusted Chicken -- Bisquick mix, shredded sweetened coconut, salt/pepper, egg, chicken breasts, butter, and orange marmalade. All sweet, with nothing to balance the sweetness. These were the three recipes I originally selected to try (my "rule" is to try at least 3 recipes from each cookbook I review), but honestly, I could tell from the ingredients that these simply wouldn't work for me for a number of reasons -- bland, lack of balance, too much reliance on canned when other ingredients/techniques are probably as easy to use with better results. The desserts aren't much better -- over-reliance on boxed cake mix, especially when the recommended "Pantry Essentials" contains all the ingredients needed to quickly assemble a basic sweet batter from scratch in just about the same amount of time. Then there's the presentation. Yes, it's a cute book, small in size, etc. Just like a large cookbook that has been shrunk. INCLUDING THE PRINT. The print is so small that even with my 3.00-strength reading glasses I was having trouble. It's printed in a medium-ish gray on a slightly off-white background which doesn't help given the small print size. Page numbers are written out ("one hundred fifteen" instead of 115) which makes finding a recipe from the index a little more difficult since the page numbers are represented numerically in the index. Look, I'm not against shortcuts -- they're necessary given how busy folks are these days and how little time we have to plan and prepare meals. But honestly, there are much better resources that will get great wholesome meals on the table quickly without resorting to dumping a can of cream of whatever soup into a pot and calling it a sauce. There are maybe one or two recipes here that I might be tempted to create; the Chicken Chili Verde looks pretty good, as does the recipe for Pesto Meat Balls, which is why I'm giving this 2 stars.