COOKBOOK NOOK: Good Enough: A Cookbook by Leanne Brown

Excerpted with publisher permission from Good Enough: A Cookbook by Leanne Brown, Copyright © 2022 by Leanne Brown, illustrated by Allison Gore, Workman Publishing Copyright ©2022. All rights reserved.

Like any phobia, such as being afraid of spiders or a fear of heights, award-winning cookbook author, Leanne Brown acknowledges that many people have a fear of cooking. “Kitchen or cooking phobia is real,” says Brown. People can experience great anxiety when it comes to preparing food for others or, heaven forbid, hosting a dinner party! It’s the fear that whatever they are attempting to make might not be ‘good enough’. Thus, Brown’s latest cookbook Good Enough: Embracing the Joys of Imperfection and Practicing Self-Care in the Kitchen is as much a book about the healing process of cooking as it is about the recipes.

“It’s about acknowledging the fears and anxieties that many of us have when we get in the kitchen and then learning to let them go in a sensory experience of working with food,” says Brown in the book introduction. “It’s about slowing down and honouring the beautiful act of feeding yourself and loved ones, releasing worries about whether what you have made is good enough. It is! My intention is for this book to be a gentle hug and a whisper in your ear that you are stronger than you know, and you deserve love and care, wherever you are, whoever you are, and no matter what anyone else has told you.”

Good Enough is a deeply personal cookbook with an uplifting and relatable message. Mixed in with the nearly 100 recipes are personal stories about Brown’s own struggles with anxiety and depression. This book is about practicing self compassion and gratitude and about cooking as a way to heal the mind and spirit with comfort foods like Salmon Dinner Pie.

In the chapter called: Good Enough for You: Making Yourself a Priority, Brown states: “We introduced the mind-blowing idea of taking it easy, making yourself a priority and letting yourself rest to gather fuel for life. By deepening and expanding life’s simple pleasures and making meals with ourselves in mind, we can focus on celebrating and restoring ourselves.”

Originally from Edmonton and now living in Brooklyn, New York, Leanne Brown is the New York Times best selling author of Good and Cheap, a book that showed how people can eat tasty and nutritious meals on just $4.00 a day. Her goal was to help improve food insecurity for people.

Experimenting with recipes can be a source of great joy and personal satisfaction as you conquer making an omelet or create your first loaf of homemade bread. This book shows us that making and sharing food with others need not to be scary—with practice comes confidence and a good place to start is with the recipes in Good Enough.

Some must-try recipes include the Delicate Dill and Cheddar Omelet, Breakfast Apple and Orange Crisp, Cauliflower-Cheese Pita Sandwich, Fast White Bean, Chorizo and Hearty Greens Stew, Chili Garlic and Date Butterflied Chicken, Surprisingly Awesome Quesadillas, Sticky Toffee Cookies and Oops! I Made Them Again Chocolate Chip Cookies. Chapters include Good Enough Breakfasts, Midday Meals, Weeknight Meals, Good Enough When You are Struggling, Good Enough Fun, Good Enough for You and Good Enough for Others. When you follow the instructions for the well stocked pantry, fridge and freezer in the beginning of the book, whether it’s breakfast, lunch, dinner or snacks—you’ve got this! Kitchen phobia? What kitchen phobia?

Good Enough is available now at book shops everywhere.

Click here for Cozy cold weather bolognese recipe by Leanne Brown.

Click here for Fast white Bean, Chorizo and Hearty Greens Stew recipe by Leanne Brown

Click here for Breakfast Apple Crumble and Orange Crisp from Good Enough by Leanne Brown

by Laurie Wallace-Lynch

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