Book Trailer & Reviews for The Kitchen Counter Cooking School

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School officially goes on sale in about a month (Sept. 29th). As a preview, here’s the official book trailer! I’m also pleased to announce the initial tour dates. We’ll continue to add events but as you can see, the Mike and I will be everywhere. I’m psyched since the book is getting some great pre-publication reviews and designations. It’s been selected as an Indie Next Pick for the month of October by the American Booksellers Association and earned a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. The Publishers Weekly review, just published this morning, even invoked the name of my hero, Julia Child (!) You can’t read the Kirkus one without being a subscriber, so I pasted it below.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review):
A Seattle-based writer turned chef demonstrates how readers can transform their lives with the right recipe.

After a stint at Paris’ Le Cordon Bleu, Flinn returned to the States to pen her 2008 debut, The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry. But after the critical acclaim and the endless book touring subsided, the author found herself at a loss for her next project until she stumbled across the TV program What Not to Wear. Envisioning a cooking class that would dig through pantries and cupboards in a manner befitting the show’s hosts, Flinn took on a group of nine culinary novitiates and imparted technique and skill, giving them confidence in the kitchen. The author began by taking inventory of each participants’ refrigerator, cabinets and eating habits. A friend’s step-daughter, Sabra, was a disaster in the kitchen, so she usually relied on frozen dinners. One of her go-to concoctions, “White Trash Garlic Bread,” is enough to give any reader, no matter how unseasoned a chef, pause: “She slathered one-half of a soft hamburger bun with Gold ’n Soft margarine, added a few hearty shakes of generic garlic salt, and topped it with dried Parmesan cheese from a can.” Another woman admitted to buying in bulk, only to later feel awful about the amount of food she wasted. Flinn’s chronicle of her culinary coaching discusses how her students fared, and acknowledges how the process led her to clean out her own cupboards: ‘I am in a battle with myself. It seemed that I had as much to learn as the peopleI’d just visited.’  The author’s humble approach is inviting and shows why her students were enthusiastic.”

You can pre-order the book from Amazon, Barnes and Noble or your local independent bookstore. If you’d like to pre-order a signed copy, drop us an email. We’ll buy  it from my local bookstore, Elliott Bay Book Co., sign it and ship it the day it comes out (Sept. 29th). Plus, I’ll slip in a special little gift…