Fix It and Forget It Kids’ Cookbook

Easy Recipes Your Kids Might Eat

I got this cookbook on the recommendation of a friend after I had exhausted all the slow cooker recipes in my crockpot cookbook. I originally got it because I thought the title meant kid-friendly, as in kids might not complain about the food. It turns out, it means for kids to make slow cooker recipes, which works even better for me, because my culinary skills don’t extend far beyond that of the average twelve year old.

All the recipes have simple to follow instructions, and every single one uses the crockpot. That means if you run errands or act as the family chauffeur in the evenings, you can still get a warm meal on the table. Even if you just don’t feel up to messing with boiling water, sharp instruments, and other means of destruction with one or more kids underfoot, you can toss the ingredients in the pot almost any time and magically have a home cooked meal in the evening. Plus, your house will smell terrific.

Each recipe has a huge photo on the opposite page, so even non-literate kids can page through and pick what seems appealing to them. That simplifies meal planning dramatically, and when they complain, I have a great comeback. “Well, you picked it.”

All the recipes seem to include kid pleasing items, like cheese, with no fancy ingredients you can’t find at the grocery store. It can turn regular hot dogs into an actual meal you might want to eat, too, as well as hide broccoli in new and delicious ways. It comes in five sections: breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner, and dessert. My only complaint is that the recipe titles aren’t listed in the table of contents, only at the beginning of each section, so that requires more flipping pages than I like. But the ease of tossing ingredients into and pot and having dinner magically appear a number of hours later offsets any disadvantage.

Plus, my kids might actually eat this stuff, without whining or complaining. Give it another year or two, and I can even make them make dinner, and (in my dreams at least) end the dinner fuss forever.