Reading The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook by Erin Chase is the first time I’ve ever actually gotten angry from reading a cookbook. Chase claims to have spent five years living abroad, but the experience she conveys in The $5 Dinner Mom Coobook is that of a woman who has never mentally left the confines of suburban America. Her recipes, rather disappointing and rarely under $5, lack diversity and an understanding of what resources are available to a poor American. This book is clearly written for the middle-to-upper class suburban mom demographic. Anyone outside of that group will surely find this cookbook confusing, disappointing or just plain useless.

One way Chase’s suburban mentality exposes itself is that her recipes largely rely on resources that don’t exist in lower income neighborhoods. For example, in her “Greek Pasta Salad” recipe, Chase directs her readers to purchase “kalamata olives with Greek seasonings” from the olive bar at their local grocery store. Other recipes call for ingredients like “canned organic tomato sauce.” Obviously, Chase has never lived in a low-income American neighborhood, nor has she visited a supermarket in one, otherwise she would know that finding an olive bar or organic tomato sauce in a low-income supermarket is an impossible task indeed. As someone who once lived in such a neighborhood, I am safely saying this from experience. I never even knew what an olive bar was until I made my first trip to a supermarket in a rich neighborhood.

Another major complaint I have with The Under $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook is that the prices Chase uses to determine how much each meal costs are off. Very off. So off that I’d wager that few of these recipes truly are under $5. $1.36 for two avocadoes? Maybe in Texas, but not in the Northeast. Two cups of shredded Mozzarella cheese for $1.50? Perhaps in 1999 prices. Now readers may argue against these points by pointing to regional price variations, and that super-rare, high-value coupon that reduces the cost of Kraft shredded cheese to $1.50. These points, however, do not excuse other trickery Chase uses to keep her recipes under $5. For example, she relies on homegrown ingredients like “fresh tomatoes from the garden” or “fresh basil from the garden” because these are conveniently priced as “free” in her calculations. Even buying these ingredients cheap at a farmer’s market would put the recipe over $5. Once again, Chase is relying on the idea that everyone reading her cookbook lives the same comfortable suburban lifestyle where everyone has a yard, patio, or balcony to grow plants. More to the point, a cookbook aimed at a general audience should not rely on homegrown ingredients.

As for the recipes themselves, they’re disappointing and lack diversity. The Vegetarian Meals chapter is a perfect example of everything wrong with this cookbook. Let’s take a look at what Chase considers vegetarian cuisine. We’ll start with her BBQ Lentils recipe, which is essentially lentils cooked in bottled barbecue sauce. Or how about Potato Pizza Pie, which is a pizza made with a potato pancake crust. If Chase had ventured outside of the confines of middle-class Suburbia before she wrote this chapter, then she would have discovered the low-cost vegetarian wonders of Middle Eastern lentil dishes or Indian curries. Why torture your kids with lentils drowning in store-brand barbecue sauce when you could serve them Mujadara? Why make a potato pizza when potato curry is cheaper, healthier, and tastier? A wasted opportunity that will certainly reinforce unfair beliefs that vegetarian cuisine is strange and gross.

Additionally, Chase has a strange propensity for including fruit in recipes where they aren’t unnecessary. The weirdest example that I can point to is her Mediterranean Pizza recipe that calls for serving sliced apples as a side dish. I can respect Chase’s effort to create a balanced meal, but serving apples as a side dish to pizza is really stretching it. There are ways to eat healthy diet that don’t rely on unpalatable flavor combinations. People can get their daily fruit servings in other, more appropriate meals.

In the introduction, Chase claims that she spent five years living in the Dominican Republic, which makes all of the problems of The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook even more baffling. After spending so much time in an impoverished county with its own unique cuisine, she squandered an excellent opportunity to introduce Americans to some creative, low-cost ethnic food. Instead, we got pizza with apples and BBQ Lentils. Sad.

The Dinner Mom Cookbook: 200 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, and Nourishing Meals That Are Easy on the Budget and a Snap to Prepare (Paperback)
by Erin Chase

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In the days before momblogs and widespread internet use, Amy Dacyczyn doled out frugal advice for years through her monthly newsletter The Tightwad Gazette. Ms. Dacyczyn (pronounced “decision”) became a self-proclaimed “Frugal Zealot” in order to support her vision of buying a New England farmhouse while supporting six children on her husband’s military salary. After achieving her goal, she decided to share what she learned from this experience through her newsletter and books. The Complete Tightwad Gazette is the corpus of her life’s work, including all issues of The Tightwad Gazette, plus her three additional books. Altogether, it’s over 900 pages of frugal advice, cheap recipes, and quick household tips.

Slogging through a 900-plus page book is an understandably daunting task for many readers. Fortunately, The Complete Tightwad Gazette is organized in such a way that allows readers to easily read a few pages at a time without losing continuity or momentum. Think of this book as a long series of short blog posts, as each essay and article is rarely longer than 2-3 pages. Quick tips and frugal recipes are scattered in easily digestible bits throughout the book. Readers who are looking for recipes or specific advice can quickly find what they’re looking for in the comprehensive 30-page index at the back of the book. So do not be scared of this 959 page behemoth—it’s a very easy read that can be finished at your convenience.

What to Expect from The Complete Tightwad Gazette

Ms. Dacycyzn’s mantra about frugality is “do sweat the small stuff.” Her overall philosophy is that it’s easier and far more beneficial to save a few cents here and there over time than it is to save a big chunk of money at once. With this belief in mind, the main focus of her newsletters are on things that anyone can do right now to save money. This is not a book full of financial and investing advice about finding the best mortgage or how to manage credit card debt. This is a book where you learn how to fix up old shoes found at garage sales to save money, turn old jeans into potholders, and re-purpose a plastic milk jug into a pooper scooper. Hey, it isn’t called The Tightwad Gazette for nothing. Ms. Dacyczyn has some incredibly creative ideas and methods to cut household costs, reuse items that would normally go in the trash, and extend the life of stuff you already own. Readers who are less extreme in their frugality will still find some useful and valuable information. For example, her lengthy guides to saving money on holiday celebrations and kids birthday parties will be welcome advice to many.

What elevates Ms. Dacycyzn’s frugal advice above other frugal experts and bloggers is that she takes the time to thoroughly research her articles and put her advice to the test before sharing it with her readers. For example, while doing research for a newsletter article about septic tank systems, she “spoke with septic pumpers, the local extension service, the EPA Small Flows Clearinghouse, and health-department officials in several states” as well as reading “three books and six magazine articles.” To test a myth about whether letting bars of soap sit unwrapped before use will increase its lifespan, she devised several experiments that included different brands of soap and an additional friend of her’s running her own soap bar experiment (spoiler: the unwrapped soap bars lasted marginally longer). This is one of the main reasons why I highly recommend the The Complete Tightwad Gazette: Ms. Dacycyzn’s advice is thorough, tested, and trustworthy. This is not the work of a tired journalist or blogger pumping out barely researched content to meet a deadline.

In addition to her moneysaving tips and articles, a sizeable portion of The Complete Tightwad Gazette is devoted to cheap recipes and ways cut costs on food. The recipes themselves are simple, familiar, and don’t require advanced cooking skills. A sample of the recipes in the book include lentil-rice casserole, whole-wheat crackers, yogurt, and chili. Although the recipes aren’t adventurous, it’s the accompanying articles about saving money on groceries that are especially insightful. Preceding the recipe for homemade chili, for instance, is an article exploring the costs of making chili with just ground beef versus chili cut with dried beans and TVP (textured vegetable protein). The chili recipe is then followed by a lengthy four-page article entitled, “Are Bread Machines a Good Value?” Don’t buy this book for the recipes; buy this book for its valuable advice on cutting grocery costs and consider the recipes a bonus.

Conclusion

Perhaps the book’s greatest strength is that it has relevant and useful information for people from all walks of life. Unlike many recent frugal books and blogs, this isn’t a book aimed at a highly-specific audience such as mothers or beginners to frugality. This is book that anyone can pick up and learn something new, no matter what their life experience or level of frugality. Thanks to its timeless advice and easily accessible approach, The Complete Tightwad Gazette will certainly remain a frugal classic for years to come.

The Complete Tightwad Gazette (Paperback)
by Amy Dacyczyn

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