cover image Dining with the Dollar Diva: Divalicious Recipies with Ingredients Costing a Dollar or Less

Dining with the Dollar Diva: Divalicious Recipies with Ingredients Costing a Dollar or Less

Elizabeth Fisher. Elevator Group, $15.95 (191pp) ISBN 978-0-9825282-4-2

This bewildering guide to dining on the cheap will likely make even the most frugal cooks give up on self-proclaimed ""Dollar Diva"" Fisher, a single mom and practiced hostess. Relying on dollar stores for most of her ingredients, Fisher offers recipes like Shepherds Pie, hot dogs with kraut, and calzones; each ingredient, from spaghetti sauce to pepperoni to shrimp, is said to cost just a buck at any local dollar store. Assuming they have access to a well-stocked discount grocery, brave readers will be able to assemble Milky Way or Butterfinger Brownies (literally adding the candy bars to a box mix), the unfortunately titled Monte Crisco, or a terrifying Po Boy composed of imitation crab, shrimp, scallops and a can of smoked oysters. Hamstrung by poor grammar, and meandering, frequently incomprehensible anecdotes, and generously padded with blank pages for cooking notes, this book proves about as reliable as bargain-basement shellfish.