Here's another fun cookbook for your kitchen. I think I have everyone she has made so far. Its easy to follow, the items used are mostly already in your kitchen pantry. She makes it fun to cook, or at least try, and the results are fantastic. Who doesn't want to eat a bit healthier, and tastier too!

Rachel's recipes are good but as an older adult I find the choice of colors very difficult to read

Another great book full of the tastiest simplistic recipes I have grown to expect from Rachael Ray.

This book is horrible especially if you are someone that doesn't like or prefers not to eat PORK since half the Book requires PORK PRODUCTS. The meals are short but unless you start preparing the items you need - no meal is 30 minutes. Some of the items are Quick but not 1/2 & I am a Great cook that was not satisfied with this book. Sorry :(

I was extremely disappointed with the recipes. Most of the ingredients call for unusual cooking items and most recipes call for salt. They just weren't appealing and I probably won't use anything from the book.

I was excited by the reviews I read on this cookbook and the fact that the receipes were not time consuming. How I was very dissappointed. There are many receipes for cooking pork and beef, both of which I eat in very limited portions. Also some spices I am unfamiliar with and would hvae liked to know what part of the grocery store to find them, without having to spend a lot of time searching.

This is a must have book for busy parents who need to feed their munchkins quick and healthy meals. Recipes from this book keep baby smiling all the time. And they help keep dad from being mistaken for a grounded blimp. The meals are savory and delicious. Now if I could only have Mrs. Ray over to cook one for us some night---that would be a great treat!

If you're looking for some REALLY "YUMM-O" healthy recipies, this is the place to go! Rachael does her thing yet again with a fabulous book making some "lower" carb meals and some really tasty eats! Pick this up, it's highly recommended.

This cookbook has some great recipies that my girlfrind and I love to make and eat.

Lately I hadn't been inspired to cook and try anything new and I was tired of eating the same old stuff over and over again. I bought this book without thinking much about it because I desperately needed some new idea in my cooking. I think this is a very good cookbook with some drawbacks. The recipes have been mostly delicious and I have been able to succesfully modify many of them with ingredients I have on hand.

I didn't realise this was a low carb cookbook, but that doesn't bother me too much. I can always add some carbs to the recipes if I wanted to.

I am a little dissapointed with the huge number of fish recipes in this book. With the CDC warning us to avoid fish as much as possible, I don't see the point of having all these fish recipes. That section of the book is a waste to me although I have been trying using pork and chicken instead of the fish with some very amazing results.

Some of the recipes call for too much meat, but that can be easily remedied, but cutting back on the meat and using more veggies or an extra salad. I also try to use less oil whenever possible.

I would have liked to see some more pictures. There are only a few pictures in this book and I was immediately drawn more towards those recipes with the pictures.

I am not too crazy about the index in this book. The index is categorized by the name of the dish. I would have liked to have a separate index categorized by ingredient.

All in all I find the recipes very tasty and I can see myself using this cookbook for a long time to come.

I love Rachel Ray on TV and this what influenced my purchase of the book. I was disappointed that the majority of the recipes had no pictures. I really like knowing how the food should look.

I loved this book. I watch Rachel Ray's T.V.program every chance I have.
Even though I have not had a chance to check all the recipes,the ones
I have tried are wonderful and really can be cooked in 30 minutes, of course, provided you have all the ingredients on hand.

Although most people love Rachael and her recipes, I occasionally hear one of three gripes:

1. You'll gain 40 pounds a year on those menus.
2. I can open cans and stir them together while throwing in a few seasonings and an occasional onion and tomato. What do I need Rachael's recipes for?
3. I chop slowly and carefully. These are not 30-minute recipes.

For those who have concerns in these three areas, I found that many of the recipes in Rachael Ray: 30-Minute GET REAL Meals are reasonably low in harmful fats and high glycemic carbs, don't mostly come from cans, and have reasonable amounts of chopping involved. Although the South Beach Diet people wouldn't approve of many recipes in this book, Rachael has made a big bow towards good food that won't put unnecessary pounds on you.

In many cases, it's pretty simple: Instead of coming in bread or a tortilla or combined with pasta, you are encouraged to wrap a lettuce leaf around the food and still enjoy the zesty tastes of Mexico and Europe. You also dip with veggies rather than crackers. Burgers show up in salads or on Portobello mushrooms. Kebobs are featured with lean meats and fish combined with veggies. Many dishes simply take meat or fish and add a sauce.

Unlike some of her later books, this one is mostly recipes rather than menus. But you'll have no trouble matching things together.

For those of you who want to eat the Atkins diet, there are plenty of carbless dishes. But many of those dishes feature lots of oils, butter, and other fats that aren't healthy in too big quantities. So watch yourself!

Rachael deliberately backslides a little for those who don't want to go carbless all the time and has some dishes that include a few carbs (pasta especially while replacing most of the carbs with veggies. I thought that many of those items looked especially appealing. Rachael dedicates the book to her Gran'pa Emmanuel who struggled with diabetes while he was alive and always kept his carbs down. You can see his influence especially in this lower-carb section.

If you only are going to buy one of Rachael's books, I wouldn't recommend this one. But if you are going to buy six, this one's a keeper!

A low-carb cookbook that contains easy to read and easy to follow recipes - even kids can cook these

I bought several copies of this book to give to family members for Christmas. They all love the book. The recipes are great!

I was reeled in by the foxy Racheal and heavy marketing, I'm a novice cook- and was looking for good healthy but easy recipes with easy to find ingredients. This book had no preface - was apparently "low carb" but
there was nothing on the cover or title to clue you into this.

Another great RR book. These can be made by "normal" people in 30 minutes! No cream of mushroom soup-love that! Great tasting-you'll never know you are saving calories. Give it a try. You can trust Rach Ray!

Who isn't trying to watch their weight lately, but who also doesn't love good food made fast? I have all of Rachael's books, magazines, you name it -- and this one is probably the most dog-eared and EVOO-stained of any of them. The recipes are straight-forward, the food looks great, tastes great and is even pretty healthy! Even the Very Berry Crumble dessert - which Rachael professes to not "do" - gets a flag as something to whip up when you don't have a lot of time and don't want something overly heavy. Great variety in ingredients, textures and concepts too, from her infamous burgers to casseroles and, of course, the requisite multitude of chicken dishes. Highly recommended for the in-a-rush cook who's looking to lighten up the meals.

I love this book b/c while many of the recipes are low carb they are not carb free and there are actually pasta recipes too :)

Rachael Ray is a wonderfully happy and enthusiastic cook. She appeals to a great number of teenagers and younger. My Ten Year Old Grandson is an excellent cook and he owes it all to her cooking shows. She really inspired him. Now he creates her meals from this book and others every Friday night. He wants to be a chef like Rachael.

My wife and I like to cook, and Rachael Ray is easy to follow, doesn't require a culinary degree, and recipes are simple & taste great.

Food, music, movies, cars, etc. are a matter of personal preference...you like what you like, and it may not be what others care for - but what matters is what you like. This is a great book with easy to make, healthy foods that are not covered in fat and butter, but still taste good!

We like Rachael Ray's down to earth "real person" feel, and so far love her cookbooks.

I brought this for my sister for Christmas, and as we live in England, it was a great difference to the British cook books we get here. She thinks its really good, but some of the ingredients are quite expensive (not sure if they're cheap over in the states and just expensive here tho). I was really impressed with the delivery time from Amazon, i ordered this just before Christmas and was told delivery would be after Christmas (i had left it pretty late to order), and it arrived within a week of ordering so we actually got it before Christmas. Very impressive coming to England from the USA in that short space of time! I am looking at ordering this book for myself when i get chance, so yes, i would recommend it to others.

i have a few of rachel ray's books and this one is probably my favorite. it's great, has some basics with a twist and is easy and quick and tasty.

I love Rachel Ray and her cookbook is excellent. I personally would had liked too see more pictures of her wonderful recipes. Personally, I like to see what I am cooking and eating. I think she is great and I love her techniques of cooking.

Sorry but this cook book is not for me i didnt care for it.

Where do you find these ingredients!! I guess I was looking for 30 minute meals of things I would most likely have in my fridge and my pantry already. I figured I would have to buy the key ingredients, like shrimp or chicken, and have everything else on hand. I didn't want to make a list to buy everything for a meal. The list is so long I have yet to make anything from this book. Maybe once I go and get ALL the ingredients and cook it, I'll change my tune.

This cookbook is way usable and every dish I have made has been a huge hit. Lots of good flavors... my family can't figure out how I can cook Greek one night, Mexican the next, and then Korean. Thank you Rachael Ray. Check it out.

Another great cookbook from Rachael Ray. Easy to use and "real" recipes. Highly recommend for anyone.

Great recipes, most are appealing even in the no-carb world. It's wonderful to have a diet cookbook that recognizes that "diet" food tastes like cardboard and moderation is key.

I have had this book for two weeks and I love every recipe I have tried. I had run out of ways to cook chicken and this has given me so many new and exciting things to do with it.

Add this to your shopping list for engaged couples -- for bridal showers, engagement gifts, or just as a gift during the stressful planning process. You'll give them the gift of prepping for marriage, nurturing and spoiling each other, domestic bliss times, and the relationship-bonding experience of cooking together. Rachael's recipes are fantastic, easy to create, and a great gift for couples who are either experienced or beginners in the kitchen. I highly recommend this as a top pre-wedding gift, and brides and grooms should register for it as well.

"30 Minute Get Real Meals" is one of many Rachael Ray publication's brought to you by the immensely likeable lady from the cable channel known as the Food Network. This cookbook is like many of Ray's books in the sense that it stresses meal making that doesn't consume much time. I love to eat but I was never very interested in cooking, mainly because of the time factor. With my busy working schedule, I always believed that I didn't have time to make fancy food dishes. But with this cookbook by Rachael Ray, most any person, regardless of talent, can be transformed quickly into an amateur gourmet chef. The recipes Rachael Ray presents often require a large number of ingredients, but the preparation is simple and they take little time to complete.

Some cook books are written for more advanced chefs but 30- Minute Get Real Meals takes the opposite approach. It assumes that you know only a few basics about food prep and simple measurements. Rachael Ray walks you through the process for each recipe; holding your hand and explaining exactly what to do. She only makes a few assumptions about what you know and don't know. She does use words like "sear", "saute", "broil", and a few others but she doesn't explain what they mean so if you don't know, you will need to consult a cooking resource. But most people know these basic terms and they should have no trouble understanding how to prepare each recipe.

One thing that makes this cook book a little different from others is its "no frills" approach. Not only are the recipes simple to follow, Rachael Ray doesn't spend much time at all making small talk or discussing the recipes or food in general. At the beginning of the book, there is only a page or two of introductory material before launching directly into the recipes themselves. The book then ends as suddenly as it begins, going directly to an index with nothing between it and the last recipe. I'm not so sure I like this approach. Even though I rarely cook food myself, I would still prefer a cookbook with more written material to read. This cookbook is more like a reference guide. The only reading material comes in the miscellaneous notes (Options, Confessions, etc.) that pop up from time to time.

As far as the recipes go, the food items presented in this book are quite good and there is something to please most anyone. Ray covers eight different food categories which aren't many but they are sufficient for a good starter cookbook and the food dishes are sure to please. Some personal favorites of mine include Green and White Lightning Chunky Chicken Chili, Pork Loin Chops with Sweet and Hot Peppers, and Swedish Meatballs on Noodles. There is even one full chapter dedicated to different ways to make hamburgers or to incorporate them into other meals.

This book is subtitled "Eat Healthy Without Going to Extremes". Ray talks about this briefly at the beginning of the book. She points out that she doesn't like extremes of any sort and she is particularly dismayed at the trend toward elimination of carbohydrates from daily eating. Rachael Ray agrees that getting carbohydrates under control can be an important step toward a trimmer waistline and healthier eating. But she rejects the idea that all carbs or even a large percentage of carbs should be eliminated from everything we eat. This is why she includes, in this cookbook, recipes that include fewer carbs but not necessarily free from all carbs. With many foods, there is almost no way to make them taste good without at least some carbohydrates. Lowering carbs is fine, but one shouldn't go to extremes by eliminating all carbs from their diet. To which I say, amen Racheal Ray! Like Ray, I also get annoyed by the zero carbohydrate crowd. I can understand the desire to improve one's physical condition but there are other, healthier, more enjoyable ways to work on weight control than complete elimination of carbohydrates. An individual doesn't have to eliminate every last microgram of carbs from every meal and snack every day in order to lose weight and be healthy.

Some of the things lacking in this book include photos of the prepared meals and nutritional data. There are only a handful of pages of pictures featuring color photos of different foods from the recipes in the book. I would like to see more pictures because visual appeal is one of the primary motivators when it comes to making new foods. Also, there is no nutritional data- something that I find ironic after listening to Rachael Ray talk about the impracticality of going no carb. You would think that Ray would want readers to know the nutritional content (at least the protein, fat, and carb content) so that they could see that the low carb recipes are plenty low enough in carbohydrates to maintain a healthy diet without going to extremes.

Overall, this is a good cookbook that could have been better with a few enhancements (like those mentioned above) and a little more talk from Rachael Ray herself. We all know from watching Rachael on television that she has the gift of gab but she doesn't share that gift very much in this cookbook. A little more talk, nutritional contents, and some more photos would make this cookbook a notch above its competitors and make it more rounded and complete. But I still like it, and I still recommend it to amateur cooks, regular cooks, and fans of Rachael Ray and her television programs.

Although I did find a few delicious meals in this cookbook, about 90% of the entire list wasn't appealing to me. The ingredients also including many items that you probably don't have in your pantry or cabinets. If you're interested, visit a local library and save yourself some money.

I purchased the book believing by the title and the description that I was purchasing a cookbook featuring generally healthier recipes. When I received the book I was surprised to learn that they are all low carb recipes only.

I was really hoping to find healthy meals that I could put together quickly when I picked up this book.

Admittedly, every thing I have made has been absolutely delicious. I give her that. But the calorie and fat content is through the roof on every recipe, and they take a tremendously long time. There is no way on earth that any of these could be put together in 30 minutes. I have spent a minimum of an hour on each recipe, and one took me over 90 minutes. And I do know how to cook.