I am not a gourmet chef.

I’m an ordinary mom who has stood dumbfounded in the kitchen more than once.

When my children were young, a friend told me how dinnertime became so much easier when she created a weekly menu along with a list of the necessary ingredients. The preplanning took the guesswork out of deciding what to make every night. I thought this sounded like a great idea, so every Sunday night I created a meal plan for the following week. Once I began, I actually started to enjoy cooking, especially with a glass of wine in hand.

One day as I was creating meals and writing down ingredients, I thought, “If I’m benefiting from this dinner menu planning, I bet my friends would too.”

"So I started to compile my menus in order to share them. One thing led to another, and I started making menus for each season, for holidays, and for special occasions. This is how my cookbook was born."

It’s ironic that I wrote a cookbook, actually. I didn’t even learn how to cook until I got married, and even then it took years before I felt comfortable in the kitchen. Although my mom was a very skilled chef, I never had the desire to learn how to cook.

At first, I didn’t do much in the kitchen. We lived in a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco, and the kitchen was the size of a postage stamp. There were restaurants on every corner. Why should I dirty my kitchen when someone else is willing to do it every night?

I do remember my first attempt at a home-cooked meal, however. I figured I couldn’t mess up spaghetti; I boiled some noodles and warmed up a jar of marinara sauce. (I might have even browned some ground beef for the sauce.) I was so proud of myself as I walked into our livingroom, where my husband was waiting patiently. As I placed the plates on the coffee table, the pasta slid off and landed on the brown carpet. I stood there stunned, embarrassed and angry. He cleaned it up and said he really wasn’t hungry anyway. I think we ate cereal that night.

I highly recommend keeping plates level when serving, and taking a basic cooking course or watching cooking shows on television and online. It really does help to learn the ABCs of cooking. Most of us have not had any training in cooking, yet we’re expected to prepare meals for our families that actually look and taste good. But even without classes, you can become a good cook, simply through trial and error, practice and persistence.

I hope this cookbook makes your evenings less stressful and encourages you to become more adventurous in the kitchen.

Bon Appetít!