Former food director of Real Simple Dawn Perry used to wake up at the crack of dawn to hit the farmers market and scour specialty food stores for peak-season vegetables and lesser-known spices. But as she started to have a family, she became less interested in spending her mornings and weekends food shopping and meal prepping than building couch forts and making Play-Doh spaghetti. If you're time-crunched for any reason — early meeting at the office or late night on the town — this book will help. Here, Dawn offers her very own playbook for getting good food on the table fast so you can spend more time doing what you love with your free time and energy.

In Ready, Set, Cook Dawn shares her secrets for creating delicious meals in no time. Whether you’re new to cooking and don’t know where to start or you’re a seasoned cook in need of a streamlined approach, this book is for you. No need to plan and shop ahead or dig through recipe boxes (virtual or otherwise), now you’ll have great meals in minutes without breaking a sweat.

Olga Massov is a freelance food and lifestyle writer and cookbook collaborator. She’s been working as an assignment editor at the Washington Post Food section since March 2019, alongside other culinary freelance projects. She has also worked as a collaborator on several cookbooks from Phaidon Press.

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