I mainly concentrated on the easily achieved lemon fizz, aka homemade sparkling lemonade, an exotic treat in the days before San Pellegrino's Limonatas were at every Trader Joe's.
Reaming the lemons, adding the sugar, and mixing it all up was infinitely more satisfying than my other "cooking," which consisted of huddling in the bathroom, using a Q-tip to muddle baby powder and water on a doll's dish.
I created this ebook for people who have always wanted to write their own cookbook.
After eight years and a dozen cookbooks, I have a wide experience in publishing: self-publishing, traditional publishing, indie publishing, magazine publishing, online publishing with e-books, ghost-writing, the whole nine. I am actually on a trip now to retrieve my mother's recipes.
We can make it an ebook, or printed book, and print as many (or as little) copies as you like.
Think of it as your art project for the next three months. You know, the one where they ask the woman if doing it ‘her way’ has gotten her the results she wants (aka a date).
I see my collection as robust without leaning too close to hoarding — considering that I love to cook and my house (and kitchen) are both small.
With the exception of a few duds I've chucked out along the way (sorry, weird Williams-Sonoma stir-fry book) to answers Kondo's central question, , another childhood holdover. I may have ordered it from the Weekly Reader book club at school. Pouring hot water over the dates to soften them felt like a science project.
Looking at it today, I remember very specifically the dreamy little girl with braids living in a pre-digital world in small-town Massachusetts, stomping through the woods with my brothers, reading alone in my room, and leaving a trail of superfine sugar (an ingredient in lemon fizz) through the kitchen.
I learned the kitchen basics from my parents, native Ohioans of German and Irish stock.
Among its 196 recipes is one for ‘blanc mang’, forebear of the jelly-like British dessert, blancmange.
The Middle English word ‘cury’ is from the old French word for ‘cookery.’ Modern cooking has its origins in Renaissance Italy and, undoubtably, the most famous of fifteenth-century chefs was Martino de Como, or Maestro Martino.
Recipes are as old as eating and recorded recipes date back to the invention of writing, with the most ancient examples from Mesopotamia, written in Akkadian cuneiform and dating to about 1750 BC.