This summer I am on a mission to learn how to cook, and I have asked my mom to help. My mom is one of the best cooks I know, she always makes delicious food and she is an incredibly inventive cook for she makes up new recipes on a nearly daily basis. It is very rare that she wants to make something that she doesn’t already know roughly how to make. It is a joke in our family when you ask her to make something again because she always responds “well… I can try, but I can guarantee it will never be the same”. This is why I have asked her to teach me how to cook this summer, because someday soon I’ll have to rely on my own cooking skills and I’m hoping I too can be an excellent cook. Otherwise I’ll probably order way too much takeout for the rest of my life.

To start this series off I decided to try out some new cookbooks to increase my more practical skills before embarking on creating recipes without having a reference like my mother usually does. The first cookbook I have decided to try is a brand new one by Gwyneth Paltrow called It’s All Easy. If nothing else the photographs in the book are amazing, when I opened this book up in the store I knew I had to buy it even though I was a little skeptical of owning a Gwyneth Paltrow cookbook. I heard in the past that her recipes are notoriously difficult, take forever, and use ingredients that are either difficult to find or are very expensive. This cookbook is not like that, remember the very apt name It’s All Easy, that’s either a very deceptive title or one that is quite fitting, soon we shall find out.

This cookbook was created with the intention of being the recipes for healthy everyday meals for when you have a time crunch, and all of the recipes are supposed to take as much or less time than ordering takeout or delivery. There is an excellent mix of vegetarian and meat dishes, with quite a few vegan and gluten free ones as well. Most can be made in 30 minutes but I think this is deceptive because that does not include prep time if you have average prepping skills (read: realistic human speed). There is a good mix of different cuisines and flavors and doesn’t feel like your average “quick food” all the recipes have the appearance of being gourmet meals that you slaved away in the kitchen for hours.

I’m really looking forward to using this cookbook, because so far it looks like a winner.