Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes

"I love my mom and I'm a good cook, and still I can't help wishing that Emily Franklin would adopt me--or maybe send me a care package. But at least I've got her recipes now. And this book, which is the perfect mix of heartwarming and mouthwatering. Yum." --Catherine Newman, author of Waiting for Birdy

"Emily Franklin's Too Many Cooks is a boon for anyone trying to cook healthy simple meals for children. It is also great fun for those of us who love to peek at the domestic lives of others. Franklin has a warm, unpretentious voice and appealing recipes that are asking to be tried." --Jenni Ferrari-Adler, author of Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant

Hilarious and wise, Too Many Cooks celebrates a year in the family kitchen with one mom, four kids, and a picky pediatrician husband.

Emily Franklin's food memoir Too Many Cooks was born of two simple loves: food and children. A foodie and former chef, Franklin wants to pass on her love of food and cooking to her kids; she wants them not only to enjoy what they're eating but to know what they're eating. So, over the course of a year, she introduces her children to new dishes--some exotic, some thrown together with whatever she has in her cabinets--with varying degrees of success. Undaunted by failure ("This tastes like sand!"), Franklin pursues her culinary mission from the heartland of Indiana to the Umbrian countryside. Some meals conjure visions of pleasure while others are utter catastrophes. Along the way, she discovers how a delicious (or even disastrous) meal can bring families together and feed the soul.

As Franklin chronicles her family's year around the kitchen table, season by season, she shares original recipes. From comfort, kid-friendly food like Mummy Nuggets, to the more adventurous Saffron Fish Chowder, to food made on the fly like Orange-Oaty-I-Don't-Know Cookies, each recipe follows a charming or bittersweet or laugh-out-loud anecdote that captures the chaos of cooking for four young kids.

Franklin seasons her stories with how-I-did-it advice on cooking and parenting that makes this such a delightful and inspiring read. And with more than 100 simple, mouthwatering dishes, Too Many Cooks is a happy mix of recipes, memories, and good storytelling.

Franklin's comedic and wise chronicle of life in the family kitchen is a deliciously entertaining, and wonderfully inspiring, book about the joys, anxieties, and delightful surprises to be found around the dinner table.

As a mother, Emily Franklin has made a point of two things: taking the time to talk and listen with her kids, and sharing new and interesting foods with them. Over the course of a year, she introduces her children to new dishes, some exotic, some thrown together with whatever she has in her cabinets, to varying degrees of success. Undaunted by failure (This tastes like sand ), Emily writes with great humor about the highs and lows of parenting in the kitchen, and shows how our lives and memories are inextricably linked to food. Too Many Cooks is Franklin's comedic and wise memoir of life in the family kitchen. Peppered in equal parts with how-I-did-it advice on parenting (one son even gobbles fava beans when she labels them Cajun) and flexible, mouthwatering recipes (salmon can sit in Impromptu Asian Marinade overnight, for thirty minutes, or no time at all), it's a deliciously entertaining, and wonderfully inspiring, book about the joys, anxieties, and delightful surprises to be found around the dinner table.