Making the transition to cooking and eating REAL food can be daunting. Many of us thrive on the challenge. Others of us despair. How are we supposed to tackle cooking all these nourishing foods from scratch when we either don’t know how to cook or have always, like the recipes in so many cooking magazines, been dependent on boxed or pre-packaged ingredients? It’s like saying we baked a “homemade” cake when really it was just a cake mix that we added eggs and oil to. Or saying we cooked a casserole when really we just emptied canned veggies into bakeware and mixed in canned cream of mushroom soup and jar of Cheese Whiz. People may compliment us on the food, but we know better.

Our standards have changed, but we’re out of our depths. What do you do when recipes make things sound so easy, but when you follow the directions (exactly!) you get a semi-regular stream of costly kitchen disasters? You are learning from your mistakes, but you would LOVE to just skip right over them and be a better cook already. That way you can get these fabulously healthy foods into your families without them putting up such a huge fight.