Book excerpt: Create delicious meals in no time with more than 125 recipes the whole family will love from the former food director of Real Simple Dawn Perry. 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. It starts with a well-stocked pantry. Dawn shows you what simple staples—some store-bought, others homemade—to keep in your cupboard, refrigerator, and freezer. She also provides more than 125 fool-proof recipes, ideas, and tricks for creating good food with what you have on hand. A can of tomatoes transforms into Dawn’s 15-Minute Marinara, which then can be used as the base for her cheesy, creamy Freestyle Baked Pasta or as the beginning of her Cheater’s Tomato Soup (and a Special Grilled Cheese) or spooned onto her Crispy Chicken Cutlets and topped with a slice of mozzarella. 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.