Cooking!

This summer while I was uber preggo and my dad and stepmom were here visiting and helping us get ready for Peanut J's arrival, my stepmom bought me this book. I LOVE it!

One of my wishes was to be able to cook more meals with fresher and healthier ingredients, but not have to do it from scratch and take forever to prepare. While they were here, my stepmom fed us like royalty! We had a home cooked healthy meal almost every single night for the entire time. It was so healthy, that even though I was eating like a complete horse, I only gained 3lbs during pregnancy in the months that they were here....I actually weighed less after delivery than what I started out at. For those who are shocked...all my bloodwork and an extra ultrasound showed everything was fine with me and the little one during the pregnancy. Because of my low weight gain, they did an extra one in the 8th month just as a precaution. We tried several of the reciepes and they were all very good. I think we only made 1 addition to one of the reciepes and took out an ingredient on the same reciepe. Once my dad and stepmom left, I was unsure if I would be able to continue the success with this book, since I'm really just your average cook.

Anyway, most of the reciepes we have tried in this book I can complete in just about 1hour from start to serve. This is perfect! Even with my limited cooking abilities, the dishes have all turned out delicious! The other things I like about this book is it's small instruction sections for different cooking techniques and it recomendations on different ingredients brands. Try some Rotel tomatoes and Santita tortilla chips (these are only $2 a bag at Safeway) they really are so much better than Tostitos or the other brands!

If you want to read more about the book, go to America's Test Kitchen Bookstore.

I plan to explore the site America's Test Kitchen a bit more as I noticed that they have some other reciepes online for free.

I also plan to check out these 2 titles as well. We actually picked up the skillet book at Costco, so I plan to look there first for these other titles. Otherwise Barnes & Noble carries it. Amazon carries it as well, the prices are all about the same, so I would check your local Costco first. It was $19.99 there. Enjoy!