The Girl Can't Cook

When I was younger, cookbooks were just something in the kitchen. My mom had a lot of them and they had their shelf under the microwave, you could almost get lost in the chaos. Actually we did loose stuff in/behind it from time to time, but we always found it again! Don't get me wrong, we used the cookbooks, in fact we used two them to make pancakes and chocolate chip cookies! But back to the shelf. My mom had two main cookbooks Better Home and Gardens New Cook Book and Betty Crocker's Cooky Book. (I'll let you figure out which one held the pancake recipe, and which one contained the chocolate chip recipe..) Those were the cookbooks of my childhood, until one day I won a cookbook and Makin' Muffins, by Susan Devins, was proudly placed on the shelf! It's a tiny book, and guess what, it's about tiny cooking! Mini muffins to be precise, and my newly won cookbook also came with a cute mini muffin tin. I soon became a mini (or two-bite!) muffin convert.

A few years went by, and one day as my mother and I were walking through the mall, I saw it. A pale lime green book with a lady in high heels carrying her shopping bag and purse, with bold pink letters that said The Girl Can't Cook: 275 fabulous no-fail recipes a girl can't be without.

Hook. Line. Sinker.

I was a goner. And when the "Look mommy, look! Doesn't this look like a good book to buy?!" didn't work (on a mother who adores books no less!), I used the old stand-by: my own money (that's right kids, it works!). This my friends is when the amazing world of cookbooks and all its wonders was introduced to me by a wonderful woman named Cinda Chavich. The author of my new cookbook.

Chavich's style is so open; reading it was like being told how to cook by your best girlfriend, and the language made SENSE!

A few more years have gone by, and I have found some more good cookbooks, though Chavich's is still my favourite. One of my favourite things to do when I'm at a library or bookstore is to go to the cooking section, and just browse. I found this book at my college library earlier this week:

I like how it is set up to take a basic recipe, and give you at least 4 different ways of preparing it to new levels of "sophistication" as they say. So far I have only beed adventurous enough to try 'Spaetzle with Butter.' (I butcher the name every time I try to pronounce it!) What is Spaetzle you ask? It is "noodles made easy." aka noodles that don't need a pasta maker, so long as you don't mind if your pasta is funny different shapes. Congratulations if you knew what spaetzle was, I didn't until I read the side bar explanation. But I'll tell you about my spaetzle adventures another day :)