Susie Homemaker....not so much

I have recently discovered a love of cooking. I have not, in my previous years, been a big fan of cooking or any other domestic chore for that matter. You see, I was not raised in a cooking household. When I was younger my mom was an "out-of-the-box" cooker. By this I mean that if it did not come out of a box we did not eat it. We ate a lot of Hamburger Helper and Stouffer's frozen dinners. Don't get me wrong, I think all that food is great and am astounded by what can actually come out of a pre-made dinner box. It truly amazes me. But, because of this I never really learned to cook. For example, I just learned to make Quaker grits about two years ago! And I still don't know how to make scrambled eggs for that matter.

I owe my newly kindled interest in cooking to The Food Network. I love watching The Food Network and get very inspired by the meals they create. I always think, if they can make it, so can I! How hard could it be? Right? I have had some flops, I won't mention the empanadas I attempted [i knew something was wrong when the recipe wanted me to use curry powder]. But I've also had some great successes.

Recently I have come across a wonderful cookbook. I am an avid reader of Confessions of a Pioneer Woman, it is a wonderful blog about a Los Angeles city girl who married a country guy and now lives on her ranch in Oklahoma with their four children. She is a great writer and a wonderful photographer [all the pictures on her site and blog are hers!]. Anyway, back to the point, Pioneer Woman is a also a great cook and she published her own cookbook [you can check it out here].

I have fallen in love with this cookbook. Not only does it have some very yummy looking recipes but also, it has illustrated steps in all the recipes. Yeppers, each step in every recipe comes with a beautiful photograph so that you can see what everything is supposed to look like. This is probably the best idea ever! For those of us that are not natural born chefs, we need a little reassurance that what we are doing is right and a picture is a great way to supply this much needed confidence. Also in the cookbook are amazing photographs of her ranch, all the animals on it, and her children [or her punks as she calls them]. She also includes cute little stories between sections, most of which are previous blog posts. I plan on adding this wonderful book to my Christmas wish list [which is now rather extensive].