Non-Cook Resources:
Books
These are books I know and love or like a lot.
- The I Hate To Cook Book
Grand Central Publishing; 2010 (originally published in 1960)
This is the great 20th century document of the non-cook! Peg Bracken was funny and knowing and really smart and had a great attitude. You could not get more sympathetic, in all the right ways, to the non-cook. If only the book had more of Peg Bracken's writing in it and fewer recipes. Then it might have become a classic non-cook treatise instead of a classic non-cook cookbook for getting by. But still, it is great.
(click here for a page with lots of comments about it)
(click here to see it on Amazon)
- The Non-Cookbook for the Non-Cook
Workman Publishing; 1982
Here is a funny joke book about being a non-cook. It has cute drawings and an outrageous yet comfy tone. Eshbaugh uses a lot of non-cook hyperbole, but it rings true in a kind of way. Big emphasis on the non-cook's prerogative to eat in restaurants. This is the only book I've been able to find so far that focuses on the essence of the non-cook rather than acting as a simple recipes for the non-cook type volume.
(click here to see it on Amazon)
- Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater
Random House; 1978
This really wonderful and funny book is a sequel to Trillin's American Fried. It's about eating -- his going hither and yon to do it and going crazy over what he finds to pack away. He's enthusiastic and he's generous. He's also discerning, in an extremely gung-ho way. The book isn't about actually making food -- Trillin is way too busy eating and praising his favorite cooks to do it himself. He is indeed a non-cook! I was too thrilled to find, almost at the end of the book, this passage: "In the kitchen, I'm mainly an idea man, although I did have Abigail [Trillin's daughter] complimenting me on my Cheerios until she wised up at about the age of three."
(click here to see it on Amazon)
- The Great American Writer's Cookbook
Yoknapatawpha Press; 1981
Although some of the recipes in this cookbook, all by various writers, are silly and funny and non-cookish, what is most valuably non-cookish about the book is this: The editor includes responses from many of the writers who did not send recipes along for the book, but instead explained why they did not contribute one, which means there's a lot of catchy non-cook testament. This definitely boosts the pride and appeal of being a non-cook. A new edition with more contemporary writers came out in 2003, but the older one has more of a non-cook ring to it.
(click here to see it on Amazon)