How to make delicious meals from prepared convenience foods.

Create sensational family meals that taste like they were made from scratch, yet actually use convenience foods -- canned, frozen, bagged, boxed, or from a jar. For soul-satisfying weekday meals to decadent desserts, all you need are common and convenient supermarket ingredients. With the 125 recipes in The Convenience Cook, managing mealtime has never been easier.

Take a can of salmon and create an inspired Thai-Style Curry, simply by adding some coconut milk and a few pantry ingredients. Create an Easy Shepherd's Pie by using convenience foods like ground beef, canned beef broth and frozen hash brown potatoes. A dozen recipes use one of the most commonly available convenience foods: chicken. When kids need a quick treat, simply unwrap the crescent roll dough, add some applesauce, dried cranberries, a little sugar and cinnamon and presto! you have an easy and delicious Apple Cranberry Pan Dowdy.

Included is a listing of pantry staples and lots of helpful tips, techniques and imaginative variations for each recipe.

Judith Finlayson is a Toronto based food writer, journalist and author with a life-long love of cooking. Her slow cooker books have sold more than 500,000 copies. Among her many books are The Best Diabetes Slow Cooker Recipes; 175 Essential Slow Cooker Classics; The Healthy Slow Cooker; 125 Best Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes; and The Convenience Cook.

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Any beginning cook could benefit from "The Convenience Cook."

Omaha World Herald

Combining fresh foods with products you have in the pantry or freezer is smart cooking for those in a hurry to turn out a family meal.

Montreal Gazette