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42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A life changing book, September 30, 2011
This review is from: The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks (Hardcover)
I understand another reviewer who didn't quite get if this was a memoir or a cookbook, and she's right because it's something else. It's a whole new genre of its own, a call to arms, or more accurately, a call for all of us to take back our kitchen, one meal at a time. People lament the issues of obesity, diabetes and cardiac health in this country but no one ever talks about what could be a remarkably simple solution: cooking one's own food. As Flinn says in this exceedingly well told narrative, if you can't cook, you're reliant on others to make your meals and most often they're corporations. They're biggest motivation? It's not your health, it's their bottom line. I went to culinary school and yet I still felt I either learned or relearned many important lessons in this book. I've tried to get through some food policy books (most notably by Michael Pollan) and I just never quite finished. Yet, she discusses food waste, sustainability and the concept of doing less-with-more in such an engaging way that I couldn't put this book down. In fact, I want to just rewite everything I learned in this book, right now, to get you to buy it because I honestly think it's the most compelling book that I've ever come across in terms of encouraging cooking that I've ever come across. I am encouraged to make my own vinaigrette, to avoid wasting food, to make my own no-knead homemade bread. This comes from me, a professional cook who went to culinary school. It's the best book I've ever come across in terms of the hope of engaging people to cook. Like Kathleen, I truly think that the more you cook, the better your health. Who the heck needs all this processed stuff? Why are we eating out of boxes? I love that she took classical French training at Le Cordon Bleu and used it to to examine something universal, namely how to benefit home cooks. While I enjoyed her first book, this one falls in a different class altogether. It's unusual to run across a book with the potential to be life changing for people, but this is one of those rare books.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extraordinary, October 3, 2011
This review is from: The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks (Hardcover)
I am part of a book club that primarily reads food-related titles, so I have read a lot of them. While I enjoyed Kathleen's first book immensely (it's still one of the favorites of the book club), this one taps into something deep. I like to cook, but I often don't -- I can find plenty of reasons to order a pizza or make a box of stuffing mix. This book convinced me that cooking is worth my time and raised a lot of questions about what we as consumers have come to accept as "food." One thing she notes is a whole history on cake mix in a chapter called "What's in the Box" that recounts the history of many convenience foods and their origins in army rations. Many chapters follow individual classes she taught from knife skills to what to do with a whole chicken to pasta to salad dressings to soup. Other chapters cover the concept of flavor as an important thing to consider, and that home cooks need to learn techniques and basic sills rather than blindly follow recipes. She comes across as very likeable and empathetic to home cooks who have so many things to figure out these days, rather than a more classic "foodie." I identified with many of the women in this book even though I consider myself a good cook. I am often overwhelmed at the supermarket, and find myself buying a lot of groceries and then tossing many away because I don't have a plan for what to do with my broccoli. She quietly offers home cooks confidence to try, and the permission to mess things up. I particularly loved this passage: "Not every meal has to be from scratch nor does everyting you consume have to be organic, locally sourced and pasture-raised. Try to find a comfortable place somewhere between the Tuna Helper and Top Chef. If you burn, scorch, drop, boil over, overcook, undercook, underseason or otheriwse put a meal together that's less than a success, in the end it doesn't matter. It's just one meal. You'll make another one tomorrow." Today, for the first time in years, I bought a whole chicken. I have taken her advice and put Post-It notes on the food in my fridge to discourage throwing away produce. (North Americans throw away up to 30% of their groceries on average.) Yesterday, I started her online cooking program and found it excellent. I just can't recommend this book enough.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Must Read for Foodies and Non-Foodies Alike!, October 12, 2011
This review is from: The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks (Hardcover)
I'm a closet foodie and I love to cook and bake, but after working all day I don't have the energy. After reading this book I realized I'm far from alone. For The Kitchen Counter Cooking School project, author Kathleen Flinn recruited nine volunteers who needed help. Each had something that needed improvement - they were cooking unhealthy food, buying take-out and resorting to what they thought would be the fastest and most convenient method of food preparation. All the volunteers were women and I could relate to all of them to some degree. At the start of the book, the author introduces each volunteer by describing a visit to their homes and in particular their kitchens. There were issues with outdated food, too much food as well as content. Food labels were looked at, cooking methods discussed and even storage issues confronted. Each woman was surprised when a spotlight was pointed at their fridge and cupboards. Sometimes it takes an outsider to say, yep, storing 15 boxes of pre-made pasta dinners at this cost doesn't make sense when you can make something yourself for a fraction of the price, is much healthier and doesn't take nearly as much time as you'd think if you know what you're doing. The author rented a kitchen and once a week the volunteers learned how to do exactly that. The book is divided into parts and each describes a food product or group and how best to prepare it. The volunteers were given the tools and instructions and were encouraged to experiment. Their delight in discovering that they could produce healthy and attractive dishes was evident. I like how the self-esteem of a person can be raised just by learning a method of cooking they previously thought had been impossible to master. At the end of the book, I enjoyed seeing how each volunteer benefited from what they'd learned during the lessons. Each chapter ends with the recipes that are taught in the class. I found the chapter on meat to be especially instructive and after reading about how many hormones and antibiotics are fed to livestock, I want to learn how to cook more vegetarian dishes! People may dislike cooking or simply don't cook for various reasons. Perhaps they were never taught properly, or as children they were shooed out of the kitchen. Maybe their spouses like doing it more than themselves. Whatever the reason, I recommend this book. It shows how anyone can learn to prepare nutritious and cost-effective meals even if they've always thought the task a daunting one. The recipes are simple and fast and there's something for everyone in The Kitchen Counter Cooking School.
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