Picky
Grouchy
Non-Cook
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Non-Cook Resources:
Books

These are books I know and love or like a lot.

  • The I Hate To Cook Book
by Peg Bracken
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 
by Sandy Eshbaugh St. Clair, illustrated by Lizzie Eshbaugh Bushma
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 
by Calvin Trillin
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
edited by Dean Faulkner Wells
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)