Pop It, Stir It, Fix It, Serve It: Can-Do Cooking

This is the easiest cookbook ever. I'm 27, married and hopeless in the kitchen. I received my first new stove 3 months ago. For me, the scariest part of cooking is not the oven, but the grocery store. Most cookbooks list ingredients I've never heard of and could never find in the store. With Laura Karr's book, you can get away with the canned food aisle and the spice section. Once you make the Spicy Tomato Cheese Sauce, you will have all of the spices you need in your kitchen to make anything. (I'd only ever had garlic salt in the spice rack before) For someone who thinks Ragu is too full of chunky bits to enjoy, I couldn't believe how delicious this sauce was! Just a few teaspoons of a half-dozen spices and you have great flavor without the chunky stuff. My husband wants me to make gallons of this sauce and freeze it so we can just forget the store-bought sauce altogether and put this on everything. The recipes make it very easy to make substitutions for picky eaters and they are also easy to make vegetarian. Before every recipe, there is a handy guide to what appliances you need to make that dish. Very helpful for the starting cook who just doesn't have their kitchen outfitted yet. The ingredient list is simple and easy to shop with. Everything I have made with this cookbook has come out delicious. I've made soup, chowder, spaghetti sauce, dinner rolls and desserts. All had rave reviews from friends brave enough to try my cooking. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to cook, but doesn't know where to start. A great first cookbook for graduates and newlyweds.

I bought the first cookbook by Laura Karr, Can Opener Gourmet. There were several recipes in there that my family requested again and again. Based on that, I picked up this cookbook as well. This cookbook is a bit more comprehensive that her Can Opener Gourmet cookbook. There are more recipes and they might be a bit more difficult than the recipes in the other cookbook. However, every recipe I have tried has been fairly easy, uses common ingredients, and turns out well. In fact there are many recipes my family has requested that came from this cook book. These are the type of recipes a young child who can read and work an oven safely can easily throw together. Additionally these are the type of recipes that can be thrown together in a short amount of time. You can easily add or delete or change the recipe to suit your taste also. It is well worth the money. Enjoy.