I joined the Peace Corps right after undergrad like most people. However, unlike most volunteers at that time, I had been cooking in kitchens and over a campfire for most of my life as a latchkey kid, a devotee of Julia Child’s PBS shows starting after daily kindergarten, a scout, and a cold prep cook in a Chi Chi’s Mexican restaurant. I grew up experimenting in the kitchen with and without my mom’s and hippie aunt’s help, substituting ingredients and tweaking recipes to make them easier and better, as well as my own. Most volunteers came to Peace Corps with some basic knowledge of cooking and with a cookbook or two. Lonely Planet and The Moosewood ones seemed to be the top two. But most were a tad perplexed about the market scene where I thrived…

What I recall is that Doris G. in the Peace Corps office in Kodjoviakope showed me a bunch of start up cookbooks and asked me to complete the project to make something more practical and with more local stuff. I reviewed, pulled together, revised, and added to what was there. It was the perfect side gig for a Maritime volunteer like me.

The Cook’s Book was a fun undertaking for the times when you couldn’t look anything up on a screen, phone calls at the PTT cost beaucoup bucks, and aerograms were still in use along with typewriters and faxes. I typed the whole thing on an old word processor using a floppy disk, I believe. It’s amazing that now, more than 35 years later, The Cook’s Book is still popping up in texts and emails among my RPCVs friends. How deliciously sweet!

Special thanks to Eric and Lauren Hohman for making this rerelease possible in these modern times. Much appreciation! Keep on cooking, mes amis!