Book Review: Money Saving Meals by Philippa Sandall & Diane Temple

Let’s face it, there’s no point in pretending that food is never going to take longer than 15 minutes to cook and prepare, nor is it always going to only involve four ingredients. It will,
however, always cost us money to buy.

So while Money Saving Meals by Philippa Sandall & Diane Temple isn’t the first cookbook to come along that promises to help us eat healthy and delicious food while keeping it cheap and it certainly won’t be the last, it is one of the most practical. Authors Sandall, a food, health and nutrition writer, and Temple, a home economist, offer not just recipes, but menu and pantry suggestions as well as cost predictions to help the modern family maximise taste and minimise waste.

The problem then is that food really does become reduced to an economic factor – the lack of images (a perfect symbol of cost-cutting) makes this cookbook uninspiring, and while the writers offer a disclaimer that their recipes do not include salt as this is both up to the discretion of the cook and the eater, some of the recipes lack more than just sodium.

The recipe for a one-pot pork, prune and pumpkin casserole, for example, conjured up images of a richly flavoured stew, laced with cinnamon, ginger, garlic and, of course, prunes, but failed to deliver more than a bland concoction even after one hour of stewing. Plus it required the tripling of some key ingredients to give more flavour, thereby throwing the cost predictions astray.

The cost predictions themselves are problematic - written in 2009, there was no way that Sandall or Temple would have been able to predict the recent floods in Queensland and the
subsequent spike in the price of bananas and other crops. Even without the floods, prices are constantly fluctuating and although such costs are expected to be approximate, there is little reason to think that these prices wouldn’t be outdated within a month of publishing.

Of course, there are plenty of reasons to keep the book – there are useful tips on minimising wastage that simply make sense, and some of the recipes aren’t too bad - the red beef and pumpkin curry and zucchini, tomato and ricotta pasta were hits, as was the aforementioned casserole, although only after the ingredients had been adjusted. The pantry list also offers a good starting point, particularly for those who really have no idea or simply need help in organising their supplies. As such, it offers a good starting point, from which to expand, tweak and play around it.

After all, that’s what home-cooked food is all about - if you can afford it.

By Annette Lin