I love to cook and I love this cookbook

Squid. My favorite cookbook of all time, and I can’t give you the name – I’ll explain later, has a recipe for squid. And it starts, paraphrased, “Everybody starts a recipe for squid with ‘Clean the squid.’ But nobody tells you how to clean the squid. Soooooo here’s how you clean a squid.”

Chris Hanson and his Life Skills Advocate team  are creative and passionate teachers with the following mission, taken from the company’s home page:

“Our mission is to provide neurodivergent individuals and families with the life skills training, executive functioning support, mentorship & coaching they need to build and sustain autonomy & independence.”

Chris and his people have written a cookbook. Not the one with the recipe for squid. Definitely not gourmet, Le Cordon Bleu, Chicken Cordon Bleu. Life Skills Advocate Chicken Wings. A cookbook designed to help people with neurodiverse skills and mental orientations develop basic cooking skills which they can gradually apply to more and more complex recipes and meals. They’re teaching how to clean a squid. AND IT IS AWESOME. You can take a look and buy it here. You can even get a discount for finding it through my post: for 50% off, enter code CASUALUNCLUTTERING50 at checkout. This is my opinion only, but I think it might be especially good for kids.

Years ago, I had an extensive, superbly carefully selected collection of cookbooks. And I needed the shelf space for something else. Let them all go -“Hey, there’s always the internet.” I regret that decision, possibly always will. I don’t remember the name of the squid book to be able to replace it. But I survived the mistake. And I do in fact still need the shelf space for its other, newer use. You’ll make mistakes while you’re organizing. Keep going, the benefits outweigh the losses.