text: There is one thing that every cookbook author can learn from How To Cook Without A Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know By Heart, by Pam Anderson (not the big-breasted one), and that is the art of the highly marketable title.
  
  For starters, this artful moniker really plays on the single gal's fears about never being able to put together nutritious, attractive, varied, affordable, and delicious meals for her future family every single night of the week. You want your kids to be armed with more than some simple carbohydrates when you send them off into the big bad world.
  
  So the plus side of this book is the title. That's where it ends. The big idea here is to help the reader become a non-cookbook-consulting cook by: a) teaching basic cooking techniques that are conducive to variation, and b) suggesting mnemonic devices for said cooking techniques. Sounds interesting so far, right?
  
  Well, the problem is that almost all the recipes rely on "canned low-sodium chicken broth", which I think is a bit of a weird ingredient. It's even included in the salad dressings. Other big hitters include: heavy cream, butter, and sour cream. Do people really eat like this? Regularly?
  
  Why not make the Easy Fruit Parfaits for a quick and sweet ending to your meal? Just take a tall glass, drop in a few spoonfuls of sour cream, then a few spoonfuls of brown sugar, and some berries. Repeat until the glass is filled.
  
  Crikey. Sour cream, brown sugar, and berries?!? Wouldn't it be just as easy to put the berries in yoghurt sweetened with a little squirt of Greek honey? Am I totally off base thinking that this sounds much more appetizing? Or, if calories are no object anyway, why not pick up some Baskin Robbins' Rocky Road on the way home from work? That's easy AND it's worth the internal havoc it will cause.
  
  Oh, and here's a sample mnemonic device that I can't not share, it's that good:
  
  "Cook tender vegetables with garlic and oil,
  Then toss in some pasta that's fresh from the boil."
  
  Pure genius, right? Right. 
  
  In a way, the author was right - I CAN cook all these things without a book. But why would I want to
  