The Crabby Cook Cookbook: Recipes and Rants

Introducing a very funny, slightly edgy, winning new kind of cookbook Jessica Harperthat Jessica Harper, star of Minority Report, Stardust Memories, Love and Death, Pennies from Heaven, and moreis a working mother of two who faces the same problems of every other woman whos the designated home cook: How do you feed a family of picky eaters when youre not crazy about being in the kitchen in the first place? A natural-born storyteller and terrifically engaging writer, she does what shes done all her lifeentertain uswhile at the same time offering 100 not just easy but really easy-to-make, really tasty recipes.

Her stories are filled with charming crabbinessof cooking early in the day for the two kids who eat only six things, then later for the husband who eats only about eight things, none of which share common ground with those first six; of inviting her mother-in-law for dinner and handing her an apron; of suffering HASHostess Anxiety Syndromehaving the book club over and picking The Good Earth because it matches the neighborhoods great new Chinese take-out, so no cooking involved! She wants to give a Nobel Prize to the person who invented bagged salad, and she recounts a wonderful story of making homemade turkey pot pie for the very first timeits crust tasted like rosemary-scented Play-Dohto serve to Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford.

But crabby or not, shes found a way to make it work, and work brilliantly. The Crabby Cook is about how to change your food-i-tudeno more garnish guilt, for example, and why sort of homemade is just as good as homemade (ie, knowing when to go all out with Pain-in-the-Ass Minestrone and when to settle for the almost-as-tasty Lazy-Ass Minestrone). Its how to identify those Miracle Foodsthe stuff that everyone loves, like Gobble-It-Up Turkey Chili and Tonys Rigatoni. And even a whole survival guidedespite her HASto entertaining, including drinks, Whores