Review of The Kitchen Counter Cooking School

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School

By Kathleen Flinn

This is a book review I wrote for the girlfriends blog

Indie Reader Houston

I have absolutely nothing to do today.  While between semesters, I need to fill the gap between holiday and spring.  So I am going to help the girlfriend out.  She is finishing up her classes this semester and does not have time to blog, so here I am.

I am an avid cook and help out in the kitchen when needed in the restaurant that I work at, so the book I was given was fun for me.  The Kitchen Counter Cooking School was an interesting read for me and has a great lesson to teach.  I love the idea of the book. There are too many people out there who are reliant on fast food, takeout, canned goods, frozen stuff, and things that only a biochemist could possibly understand.  People need to understand the importance and the ease of making fresh food, while embracing the use of the leftovers to stretch their ever shrinking bank balances.

The book chronicles the education of regular people who have been living on canned goods and boxed products for pretty much their entire life.  Most are afraid of food and need the courses to show that food should not be feared but embraced.  The author, Kathleen Flinn, shows the participants of her impromptu cooking school how to utilize basic skills to make healthy, fast, and cost effective food using the most basic culinary techniques.

There were only two glaring problems with the book.  The participants of the “cooking school” were introduced at the beginning of the book, and the reader was left to remember who the narrator was speaking of throughout the book without any context.  This left me as the reader confused as to the context of the participant’s experience, since their backgrounds are important regarding their culinary education.  The other problem was that author included random personal stories at the beginning and smack dab in the middle of the book.  The narrative about the cruise she took with her husband is better suited for a memoir.

This book illustrates the importance and need to remove the canned and packaged food from our lives.  I know we work hard and are pressed for time, but with a little planning and thought, we can have fresh healthy food any night of the week.

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