"Still Life with Menu" cookbook by Mollie Katzen

This cookbook will teach you how to live—but don't take our word for it. 

From the book introduction: 

”In 1972, when I began working on my first cookbook, I didn't know anyone who worked a 9-to-5 full-time job. Most of my contemporaries were either in graduate school (indefinitely) or following creative, self-motivated, very flexible styles of living. Accordingly, it didn't occur to me to consider convenience needs when plotting out recipes. I just assumed that people would cook whatever they felt like eating and adjust their schedules to what they were cooking. If that meant being in a kitchen all day long, stirring and kneading and grinding by hand, other endeavors would just get postponed. I eventually posted "preparation time" notices on each recipe, but that was mainly to give an overview of what was involved in preparing a dish, not because I thought that anyone might be in a hurry.

But those days have evolved into these days, and now everyone I know has made serious commitments to life and work, and is very, very busy. Many of us who once paid careful attention to everything we ate—and could afford the time to be conscientious about healthy "natural" eating-frequently find ourselves grabbing food on the run. In our hearts, perhaps, we've continued to admire and appreciate the idealistic approach to cooking we once had time for, but we come home tired and hungry, and in many cases we have more than just ourselves to feed. We need con-venience, and often that means we end up eating things that would have made us cringe fifteen years ago. Or we splurge and buy attractive, more-or-less healthful take-out foods from fancy delis—but who can afford to do this on a regular basis?

The purpose of this book is to help reintroduce good eating into our increasingly complex schedules; to provide encouragement and ideas as well as recipes and menus; and to make interesting, genuine, and inexpensive food as accessible and convenient as possible. It takes some thought and planning to get our kitchens and ourselves into gear when so much of our time and energy is spent elsewhere. But the effort will be well rewarded. We will all be the richer for it, and our lives might even be that much longer.”