Money-Saving Meals

Readers who want to prepare hearty, simple food while keeping costs and effort at bay will enjoy this fifth volume in the Great Cooking Made Easy series. Each chapter presents a complete menu and a different cost-cutting idea, such as pita sandwiches, main-dish salads, meat entrees stretched with rice, thick soups, stratas made with leftover meat and day-old bread, low-cost roasts dressed up with sauce, and frozen-fish dinners. The frugal fare, which utilizes cake mixes, canned fruit and tuna, and frozen vegetables, doesn't get more exciting than pork pizza, stuffed steak rolls, peanut pilaf, zucchini-cheese frittata or strawberry-rhubarb and cherry-banana shortcake. But this cookbook is noteworthy for its meticulous attention to detail and organization, including step-by-step directions for grocery shopping, selecting produce, cooking rice, deboning, cutting and stuffing fowl, making tortillas and crepes, and timetables that divide the menus, showing cooks when to prepare each dish for the most efficient results. Photos not seen by PW. (September 24)