I won!

Years ago, I found a copy of Desperation Dinners! at a library book sale. It looked like my type of cookbook and I happily snatched it up. I loved it, although I didn't always follow "desperate" techniques when I made the recipes. My frugality meant that I never bought the pre-chopped, frozen onions that might be called for in a particular recipe or used some of the other convenience items that saved time. It didn't matter to me-I may not have gotten dinner on the table in 20 minutes flat, but I was still making an easy, quick, and tasty meal. I loved their Presto Pesto Soup, my family raved about the salmon croquettes, and I finally learned how to hard cook an egg without consulting a cookbook every time.

Then (be still my heart!), they added another book which I snatched up the very first time I saw it on the shelf...Cheap. Fast. Good! Again I learned a new technique-how to perfectly poach chicken for the freezer-which was a skill I hadn't seemed to master before. I had always just started it boiling and continued cooking it until it was done. It came out dry and sometimes quite tough. Not any longer. And using that pre-cooked chicken in an adapted version of their individual chicken cobblers to make a pot pie for dinner is always enjoyed by the whole family. There's so much more to the book, of course, but those are the pages the book falls open to automatically.



So, when the Desperation ladies started a blog, I quickly added it to my google reader. They offered a giveaway a couple weeks ago and I won the drawing for a "Cooking Light" cookbook! You can read all about it here.

I encourage you to check out their books (there's also a Desperation Entertaining! volume) and visit their blog, Kitchen Scoop. I think you'll be glad you did!