I know I said I would blog yesterday but I had a bad case of I-don’t-know-what-to-cook-for-supper-itis.

It started in the morning when I asked Rick if he had any idea what he’d like to eat that evening. Unfortunately, he has a permanent case of the aforementioned affliction. I don’t know why I keep asking.

As a general rule, I don’t mind cooking and pretty much, I always like eating. So why is it so hard sometimes to figure out what the heck’s for supper? Sure we could default to a bowl of cereal or a bowl of ice cream or a bowl of bacon – we don’t usually have any little kids around that we need to set “a good example” for. But maybe it’s the way I was brought up – and Rick, too, for that matter: supper usually means some meat, some starch and always, some vegetables.

I don’t ever remember my mom in a dilemma about what she would put on the table. Mom had her repertoire and it was all good. And except for the Co-op cafeteria or McDonalds when we went shopping in Edmonton, I can barely recall even eating in a restaurant with her. Mom was thrifty and bonus: she was a great cook.

And then I moved to Edmonton to go to university. My downfall began when I moved away from my mom’s good habits and figured out I could spend my student loan at Maxwell Taylor’s and on all the offerings at HUB and SUB. Plus my new roommate showed me a brand-new trick: I could eat dessert first.

Whether you have the money to eat out all the time or not, sooner or later, like after a looooong road trip, you just want to eat a home-cooked meal. Or as I, my kids and countless others have announced when they returned home to their mom’s kitchen: I just want to eat some real food.

It’s funny – I didn’t discover The Mom 100 Cookbook until my kids had almost all moved away from home. My cupboard was populated with plenty of Company’s Coming cookbooks but a review in a magazine about this one intrigued me. I ordered it from the library and soon after, I ordered it from Amazon.

Hands down, this has got to be my favorite cookbook. Before Katie Workman entered my life, I had never made jambalaya (her version is called Arroz con Pollo) or a decent meatloaf. And we always had spaghetti with a loose meat sauce. Now I always corral my ground beef into her yummy meatballs.

I know with the Interweb, we don’t really need paper cookbooks anymore. But there’s something to be said for having it all downloaded and on your counter for easy browsing. Plus, like Jean Pare, I now know I can pretty much trust almost everything Katie has to offer. She tells a story before each recipe and you don’t have to scroll miles and miles down the page to get to the ingredients if you want to skip the story for later.

Also important: there’s a picture of every recipe so you can at least have some idea what you’re aspiring for. And the ingredients for the most part are pretty run-of-the-mill: true genius in the kitchen, after all, usually begins by sautéing some onions and garlic. Because as much as I enjoy watching the TV show Chopped, I am really not interested in cooking with natto or squid ink. Probably ever.

What makes The Mom Cookbook unique are the forks-in-the-road that she includes with every recipe. Meaning you can customize each recipe to accommodate the plain-er palates (usually kids) along with the more adventurous and you don’t have to cook a separate meal. (And it’s not just adding Frank’s to everything.) Sooner or later, the kids are gonna move up the taste-bud-food-chain. Because: exposure. I was a picky eater when I was a kid, but most picky eaters eventually get curious about what’s on the other plates around them.

I didn’t cook from Katie’s cookbook last night – I defrosted some ground beef and we made hamburgers in the cast iron frying pan with melted Edam cheese, sautéed mushrooms and fresh greens on a Coop bakery bun. And some homemade fries in the oven. It wasn’t original, but it was good.

And I have no idea what we’re going to eat tonight…