My friend Kristine is - to be kind - cooking challenged. But, she would actually love to cook. To me it seems that she is just plain frightened to fail. Come on girl, the kitchen does not bite. Give it a try, the worst that can happen is that you burn the stuff. So? -Next time use a lower temperature, shorter cooking time or whatever. You can't become a good cook with out actually cooking. Mistakes will happen; they happen to me too, don't sweat it! Just lean from them and move on.

Kristine visited me at our beach house last summer when I just happed to make a peach cobbler. To be honest, if its summer, you can be sure there is a peach cobbler in the making just about every day in our house. Randy, my love - my mate, can't get enough of it - the COBBLER! Mind out of the gutter people! It is really easy to make - I will pass the recipe along when we get closer to summer and it's prime peach time.

Back to Kristine; she was fascinated by the simple process of putting the cobbler together and she loved how it tasted, she also had a ton of my tasty egg liqueur and limoncello (see Christmas gift recipes) that weekend. The simple way of making the cobbler, as well as its great look and taste also made her want to try her hand at making one herself - pretty brave for a woman who so far lived from eating out every day. From then on she turned into 'Kobbler Kris'. She would send me emails from her home in Chicago asking about this or that fruit to put into the cobbler, she had questions about pan sizes, oven temperatures, what ifs, and so on. It was hilarious; the woman became obsessed with cobbler. I think after about a year she has somewhat eased up on her cobbler mania. Now she is trying to move on to other things to cook. Bravo Kristine. So, when she saw my new website she suggested doing something useful for the cooking- challenged, the kitchen virgins. "How about you develop some simple recipes with no more that 4 or 5 ingredients? Now that is something useful for people like me, Forget all the other stuff you have on your site. Help the forgotten 'idiot cooks' and do something for us".

OK my girl; I am taking up your challenge. In this new column I will try to come up with simple and yummy dishes for the virgin cook. Let me know if it's helpful and usable. Have a question? You know the email address. Just write, I will do my best to help you out. Just one question for you: Does salt and pepper count as part of the 4 ingredients? Let's say it does NOT.

I will give it a whisk and a whirl. But you have to promise to really cook, not just ogle the recipe- this is not food porn - this is 'DOING IT'!

~ Click on the recipes ~