From Old Amish Kitchen · Digital cookbook and dinner planner

A month of home-cooked dinners, built to cut the $2,913^ of food a family of four throws away each year.*

50 Pennsylvania Dutch–inspired recipes, a 28-day dinner plan for households of 2–5 with the shopping lists already written, and seven ways to turn the ingredients you buy into several meals. See what each recipe costs, when homemade is worth it, and how to put leftovers to use.

Full PDF book · Interactive browser edition · Audio for every recipe · Printable planning pages

Get the complete digital set · $39 See sample pages

One-time purchase. Digital files. No physical book is shipped.

* U.S. EPA, Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to American Consumers (2025): about $728 per person and $2,913 per household of four a year, in 2023 dollars, counting food wasted at home and when eating out. National averages; your household will differ. How the book helps

Amos, the fictional host of Old Amish Kitchen (AI-generated image) — Careful with food, careful with money. Americans throw away $728 of it a year each.
Amos · EPA, 2025

Careful with food, careful with money. Americans throw away $728 of it a year each.
Amos · EPA, 2025

50recipes

28day dinner plan

2–5people per household

$375^**a year saved,
family of 5

** Our estimate from the book’s prices: a family of five that bakes its bread, makes broth from the bones and cooks dried beans instead of buying canned saves about $375 a year on those three items alone, repeating the 28-day plan through the year. Ingredient costs only, August–October 2026 prices; yours will differ.

Where the grocery money goes

✓ Based on U.S. research · EPA · ReFED · NRDC

Household of 4 · per year$2,913 of food goes in the trash.

That’s how much an average American household of four throws away, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2025): about $728 per person, roughly 11% of everything spent on food. ReFED, a national food-waste nonprofit, puts it even higher, close to $800 per person. Studies keep naming the same four reasons, and the book answers each one:

No plan

Research: Many grocery purchases are unplanned, which leads to buying food that never gets eaten.

The book: A 28-day dinner plan: you know what you’re cooking each night and what to buy for it.

Buying more than the recipe needs

Research: People buy for the deal, or without a clear sense of how much a recipe takes.

The book: Weekly shopping lists in whole packages, worked out separately for 2, 3, 4 and 5 people.

Food stored the wrong way

Research: Many people don’t know how to store food, so it spoils before it’s used.

The book: A part on keeping food: where things go in the fridge, how long they keep, how to use the freezer, plus freezer labels.

Leftovers with nowhere to go

Research: Few people have practice turning leftovers into another meal.

The book: Seven chains where the leftovers of one dish are an ingredient of the next, plus six recipes for the last of everything: croutons, banana bread, bread pudding, rice pudding.

A regular cookbook

Recipes

This book

Recipes
What to cook first, so nothing sits until it spoils
How much to buy for 2, 3, 4 or 5 people, so there’s no extra
What to do with leftovers: they become the next dinner

$2,913 is a national average that counts all the food a household wastes, at home and when eating out, not only dinners. The book works on the part that happens in your own kitchen; how much you save depends on how much your family throws away now.

Sources: U.S. EPA, Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to American Consumers (2025): $728 per person and $2,913 for a household of four a year, about 11% of food spending, in 2023 dollars. ReFED, Rethinking Food Waste: Understanding Consumer Food Waste (July 2025): nearly $800 per person. ReFED, Food Waste: Causes & Impacts: the causes listed above.

Check your kitchen

Which of these happen in your kitchen?

Tick what sounds like you. The estimate uses U.S. research on what households throw away and why, scaled to your household size.

Tick the habits that sound like you

Get the complete digital set · $39

Rough estimate, not a measurement of your kitchen. We took the EPA’s $728 per person a year and split it by the reasons households gave in NRDC’s kitchen-diary study, leaving out inedible scraps such as bones and peels. The EPA figure also counts food wasted when eating out, and NRDC’s shares are by weight, from three U.S. cities in 2017, so treat these numbers as an upper estimate; your family’s habits and prices will differ. Two habits have no separate dollar figure in the research, so we don’t invent one.

Sources: U.S. EPA, Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to American Consumers (2025) — $728 per person a year, 2023 dollars. NRDC, Estimating Quantities and Types of Food Waste at the City Level (2017) — reasons for discarding: moldy or spoiled 20%, didn’t want as leftovers 11%, left out too long 7%, past the label date 4%, too little to save 4%, inedible parts 44%.

One purchase, several dinners

Buy one thing. Cook it into several dinners.

The book is built on chains. In some, one purchase carries through several meals; in others, dinners share the same cheap ingredients, so nothing sits until it spoils. Six of the book’s seven chains:

Dinner from a person

Five dinners from the plan, cheapest first. Choose how many people you cook for.

Book estimates for the ingredients that go into the pot, at the book’s August–October 2026 prices, before tax. At the checkout you pay for whole packages; what’s left goes into the next meals. Your prices will differ.

Make it or buy it

We save your money—and your time.

Homemade isn’t always cheaper. For every item it compares, the book puts the homemade cost next to the closest store product at the same weight and gives an honest verdict: make it, buy it, or it depends. Where the store wins, it says so—no need to spend an evening saving nothing. Four examples:

Bread

1 loaf

Homemade$0.54

Store$2.55

Make it

Saves about $2 a loaf. Store price: 1.4 lb of white sandwich bread.

Shredded cabbage

10 oz

Homemade$0.47

Store$2.14

Shred it yourself

A whole head against a bag of coleslaw mix, the same weight.

Cottage cheese

12 oz

Homemade$2.49

Store$1.44

Buy it

Cheese takes a lot of milk to make a little cheese, so the tub wins.

Roast chicken

raw bird vs. rotisserie

Raw bird$9.05

Rotisserie$5.97

It depends

A raw bird of about 4½ lb against a cooked rotisserie of about 2¼ lb. They are not equal purchases: which costs less depends on the edible cooked yield and your local prices.

Ingredient costs only. Your time, energy and equipment are not included. In the book, homemade broth counts only the vegetables, because it uses the bones of a chicken you have already paid for.

Built for real weeks

When the plan doesn’t fit your week, the book already has an answer.

Don’t like liver? Swap it.

Ready swaps that keep the plan working, with what changes on the shopping list and in the month’s total for 2–5 people. The menu doesn’t rebuild itself; the book shows you the swap.

The book’s swaps table: instead of liver and onions, or instead of the week-2 pot roast, with the change to the month’s total for 2–5 people

No time this week?

A separate busy-week plan: 3 cooking nights, 2 quick dinners of 25 minutes or less, 2 reheats, with its own shopping list.

The busy-week plan in the book: days 1 to 5 with cook, quick and reheat nights

It didn’t turn out?

Every recipe has an “If it goes wrong” note, plus a quick table for the usual problems: dense bread, tough beef, heavy dumplings.

The book’s “When something goes wrong” table

The month plan doesn’t need sourdough, cheese, yogurt or sauerkraut first: those are optional projects.
US and metric measures, plus ingredient and equipment swaps.
Each day the plan says what to set aside, freeze, thaw or keep for the next dinner.
A tracker for what you actually bought, kept and threw out.

Sample pages

See the pages you’ll use in your kitchen.

These are pages from the second edition, as they appear in the files you get: the browser edition, the PDF book and the printable pack.

The browser edition on a computer: contents, search and filters on the left, the drop biscuits with milk gravy recipe on the right — **The interactive browser edition.** The same book as a web page: contents always on the side, search, filters, and the household size switch at the top. On a phone it becomes one column you scroll with your thumb.

The browser edition on a phone, open on the drop biscuits with milk gravy recipe — **The interactive browser edition.** The same book as a web page: contents always on the side, search, filters, and the household size switch at the top. On a phone it becomes one column you scroll with your thumb.

Two pages of the PDF book with the Sunday roast chicken recipe — **A recipe in the PDF book.** Sunday roast chicken: cost, checkout price, the store comparison, the method and what to do if it goes wrong.

Printable pages: week 1 dinner plan and week 1 shopping list for two people — **Week 1 and its shopping list, for two people.** From the printable pack: what to cook each day, what goes forward to the next meal, and the list by store section.

Adapts to your store

Your prices, not a national average.

Prices differ from town to town. In the browser edition, type in what you pay for the basics you buy—just the ones you know. The rest keep the book’s price.

All four weekly shopping lists, line by line and at the checkout
The month’s cost for 2, 3, 4 and 5 people, in the calculator section
The cost of every recipe, batch and per serving, in the calculator section

In the calculator tables the book’s price stays next to yours, crossed out, so you can see the difference. Your prices are saved only in your browser, on your device. Recipe pages, the month table in the plan section and the PDFs keep the book’s dated prices.

The browser edition’s price table with four prices typed in: potatoes, chicken, ground beef and eggs — Type what you pay

Recipe costs recounted at the typed-in prices, with the book’s price crossed out — The book recounts

Listen while you cook

Every recipe comes with audio.

Hands in the dough, eyes on the pan. Press play and the recipe is read to you step by step, so you don’t have to keep looking back at a screen or a page. It’s also there for anyone who finds small print hard going.

All 50 recipes, from ingredients to the last step
Play it on your phone right next to the stove
Pause, go back a step, listen again

15 · Beef and Homemade Noodles 27 · Potato Soup 37 · Drop Biscuits with Milk Gravy 50 recipes to listen to

Now playing 09 · Sunday Roast Chicken

1:38⏮❚❚⏭4:12

Heat the oven to 425°F. Pat the chicken dry and salt it inside and out.
Put the onion in the cavity. Rub the butter over the skin.
Roast 1¼–1½ hours, until the thigh reads 165°F.

What you get

Your complete digital set

The full cookbook as a PDF, for reading and printing.
The interactive browser edition, with recipe search, filters and a price calculator.
An audio version of every recipe, read step by step.
A 28-day dinner plan and a separate busy-week plan.
Four printable planning packs, for households of 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Weekly shopping lists, a spending tracker and freezer labels.

Read the PDF in your usual PDF reader. Use the browser edition for search, filters and the price calculator.

Meet your host

Amos.

In old Pennsylvania Dutch kitchens, food was never something to throw away. Stale bread became pudding, the bones went into the stock pot, and Sunday’s roast came back on Monday with homemade noodles. Nobody called it saving money. It was respect for what you’d bought and for the hands that grew it.

This book carries that way of cooking into a modern kitchen: a pot on the stove, the family around the table, a house that smells of supper, and a grocery bill that goes further.

From early readers

What readers use first

I’m usually standing in front of the fridge at five o’clock wondering what we’re having for dinner. The weekly plan gives me somewhere to start, and I can swap meals around when our schedule changes. That’s probably my favorite part of the book.

— Nancy H., Fort Wayne, IN

I started with the chicken recipes because that’s something we already buy. What helped was knowing how much meat to save for the next meal instead of serving it all at once. It made the leftovers feel planned, which is a new thing in my kitchen.

— Rebecca T., Springfield, MO

The first thing I looked at was the make-or-buy section. I’ve tried making everything from scratch before, and I never kept it up. This feels more manageable. I can pick a couple of things to make at home and keep buying the rest.

— Paul D., Cedar Rapids, IA

I wanted ideas for cooking for two without ending up with enough food for the whole neighborhood. The different household quantities are handy, and the storage notes help me decide what to keep for lunch and what to freeze.

— Janet W., Winchester, KY

I read recipes on my phone, but I still like a paper shopping list. Having both works well for me. The list is organized by store section, so I’m spending less time walking back for something I missed.

— Elaine F., Green Bay, WI

Who it’s for

Who it’s for, and what it isn’t

A good fit if

you cook dinner for 2 to 5 people
you shop at an ordinary supermarket
you want a plan and a shopping list instead of deciding every night
you like plain food: roasts, soups, bread, noodles, pie

Not the right book if

you don’t eat meat, eggs or dairy: many recipes use them
you need a calorie-counted meal plan: there isn’t one
you cook for one: the plan starts at two people
you want a printed book in the mail: everything is digital

Price

The whole set, one price.

Your complete digital set

The full cookbook as a PDF, for reading and printing.
The interactive browser edition, with recipe search, filters and a price calculator.
An audio version of every recipe, read step by step.
A 28-day dinner plan and a separate busy-week plan.
Four printable planning packs, for households of 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Weekly shopping lists, a spending tracker and freezer labels.

$39one time

Get the complete digital set · $39

One-time purchase. Digital files. No physical book is shipped.

14-day refund. If the set isn’t right for you, write to oldamishkitchen@duck.com within 14 days of purchase.

Questions

Before you buy

What do I get?

The full PDF cookbook, the interactive browser edition, an audio version of every recipe and four printable planning packs for households of 2–5. Everything is digital; no physical book is shipped.

Does the plan cover all our food for the month?

It covers 28 dinners and the leftovers planned for some lunches. Breakfasts, snacks and drinks are outside the plan.

Will my groceries cost the same?

Probably not exactly. The figures are dated book estimates. Your local prices, package sizes and existing pantry supplies will affect your shopping total. The browser edition includes a calculator for entering your own prices.

Can I use my own store’s prices?

Yes. In the browser edition, type in what you pay for the basics you know. The four weekly shopping lists, and, in the calculator section, the month’s cost and the cost of every recipe are recounted at your prices. Recipe pages, the month table in the plan section and the PDFs keep the book’s dated prices.

How do I read it on my phone?

Read the PDF in your usual PDF reader. Use the browser edition for search, filters and the price calculator.

Can I print it?

Yes. You get the complete book as a PDF and a separate printable planning pack for each household size. Choose the pack for your family and print the pages you need.

Why buy the book if I watch the channel?

The videos show individual ideas. The book puts the recipes, quantities, dinner plan and shopping lists together so you can use them as one reference in your kitchen.

Is it a diet book?

No. There are no calorie counts and no weight-loss promises. The recipes use everyday ingredients: meat, eggs, dairy, flour, vegetables and beans.

Get the complete digital set · $39

Waste Not, Want Not50 recipes · 28-day dinner plan

$39

A month of home-cooked dinners, built to cut the $2,913^ of food a family of four throws away each year.*