Isn't it time to revolutionize the way recipes are written? My easy-to-read format gives all the tips and tricks you need to be "confident in the kitchen". This is my latest edition. expanded, revised, improved. When I went off to college, I abandoned the kitchen skills learned from my mother and started living on junk food. A king-sized Snickers bar washed down with a super-sized Crystal Light quickly became my idea of a complete breakfast. By the time Mark and I married, the kitchen was simply part of my past, and I was pretty happy leaving it there. (No dishes!) There was no push to change. Mark liked to cook, and he had a stack of tasty recipes from his mother.

So you can imagine my surprise when she gave me a beautifully wrapped Christmas present which held an equally beautiful cookbook. Looking up in confusion, I asked: "Shouldn't this say 'To Mark'?" Fast forward to two kids and a husband absent from dawn to dusk starting a new career. Finding myself back in the kitchen, it was an accomplishment just to get food to the table. (So many disasters!) I wanted to do better. Taste tests became regular events, and when the kids got older and started tacking the family faves, they began asking lots of questions. Suddenly I envisioned recipes in a new easy-to-read table format outlining not only "what you need" and "what to do". but also "WHY." And so I found myself writing a cookbook.