Prep and Rally

It is hard to believe that Dini Klein’s just published volume, Prep and Rally, is her very first. She has done the investigative work of a lifetime teaching and life coach veteran. 

Dear harried moms who constantly wrack your brains about that elusive perennial dinner pursuit, I’ll bet you never dreamed that the most stressful part of your day is about to turn into the most exciting one!

Prep And Rally: An Hour of Prep, A Week of Delicious Meals https://a.co/d/1UAUevM

Prep and Rally is More than a Cookbook!

 

Although it is all about cooking, calling it a cookbook would be unfairly reductive: there are no end of great cookbooks and recipes online out there

Dini has indeed embarked on a massive project, and has brought to life an essential idea whose time has finally come: teaching the busy homemaker to make real dinner with real food in real time on a daily basis.

All Kids Aboard!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a priceless added bonus, Dini is making her book exciting and inviting to parents and children alike. An extensive cooking course and a home economics course all rolled into one. And all stress-free. No cooking school fees and no high therapy bills: it is costing you the price of the book and nothing more.

Dini has done all the hard work: all you need to do is follow her wisdom and utilitarian mastery.

That lame but-my-kids-will-never-eat-THIS! line is going out the window. The kids are happily eating in a wrap exactly what the grownups are eating on their plates. No more cooking separately for kids? No more hours slaving over dinner every day? No more uninspired uninspiring microwave dinners? Imagine that: the Holy Grail! Where has priceless Family Life Coach Chef Dini been all our lives?

My Take on Children’s Eating Habits

This paragraph expresses my personal thoughts on child eating habits, only tangentially but importantly related to this book. The reason I feel it might belong here is because the main purpose of this book is to feed the family using the same meal elements for the whole family. At the same time, the clamor of many parents struggling with feeding growing children must be acknowledged and dealt with. 

Bad kid eating habits die hard. Moms are the best designated people to reverse that. The subject of “Will my Kids Eat THIS?” is very dear to me. I write very extensively on this subject, especially in my Whole Foods Cookbook.
I respectfully think we must deal early, lovingly and knowledgeably with the conundrum of picky kids and non adventurous kids, rather than accept it as fait accompli: we parents all want to raise healthy and productive, and yes, adventurous children. Kids with serious special diet needs (and three of my nearest and dearest are in that number) benefit from vital added professional nutritional counseling.

Once this is addressed, I believe kids will slowly learn to eat what a loving mom will feed them with their special diet needs foremost in mind. Dear moms, hang in there and keep up your beautiful work! What a shame my Mother ZL, who forced a tablespoon cod liver oil down my throat every morning because I was that proverbial recalcitrant picky eater, is not alive to see me go on a diet!
PS: You surely must have noticed, most of today’s star chefs used to be yesterday’s picky eaters! Need I say more?

Prep an Rally is Very Thorough

This work takes into account every single aspect of preparing delicious nutritious meals in the clearest most organized most cost effective time effective way possible: planning, budgeting, storing, labeling, shopping, ingredient listing, repurposing, adapting.

In order to use the book to best advantage, her introductory chapter must be read from beginning to end before you start cooking in earnest: this is the mini Boot Camp part; this is where Dini pours her heart out and explains how she has constructed her work: one hour of weekly meal prepping goes on to become dinner for the whole week, just by using the initial meal prep in the right variations and with smart permutations.

The title Prep and Rally fully lives up to its promise, and then some. More than just dinner, it describes a whole lifestyle: people who cook and eat together stay together and have fun together. There are plenty happy beautiful Mommy-Daddy-Munchkins pictures throughout the book to prove it! As they say in Hebrew, Gam Offa Ve Gam Yaffa (good cooking and good looks too, which sounds much more catchy in the original!)

Not a penny of your shopping money and not a minute of your prep time will go to waste: every single thing you have prepped on day one is stored in tightly sealed glass containers, good to go for Part Two Rally for the whole week.

Book Layout

There are ten chapters, all formatted identically:

– Menus: 4 complete dishes: 4 dinners for 4 people. 4 is the magic number.

– Itemized prepping list

– Adaptations for kids, gluten free, vegetarian.

– Cooking tools and equipment needed

– Grocery and pantry list, all number coded for easy what-goes-where tracking

– Prep: the recipes proper

– Rally: all the possible combinations the recipes will afford you, to last you all week.

The Recipes

 

The recipes are wholesome, simple, streamlined, sensible, nutritious, inexpensive, modern without ever falling into any trend or fad traps. Short familiar ingredient list, minimal steps and utensils. They never get gimmicky or cute: they are real from scratch food. Fun food made with serious ingredients.

Kudos to Prep and Rally Great Team!

The pictures are awesome and drool worthy.

Photographed by: Ren Fuller
Food Stylist: Marian Cooper Cairns
Prop Stylist: Alicia Buszczuk

Get ready: Dini is going to make a pro home cook out of you! Pretty soon after you get the hang of it, you’ll be coming up with your very own Mommy and Kids Prep and Rally Chapters!