My Client's Recipes: Homemade Cooking from Thirty Years of Kitchens

Thirty years of knocking on front doors. Thousands of kitchens. These are the recipes they wouldn't let me leave without tasting.

I never trained as a cook. Never worked a restaurant line, never went to school for it. I got into all those kitchens the same way every time — I knocked on the door. Vacuums first, then cookware, then repairs, and since 2020, cleaning homes across Solano County. And everywhere I went, somebody made me eat something and then told me exactly how they made it.

This is that collection. The chili that won the cook-off. The pot roast the whole street asks about. The biscuits a woman named Earlene made me promise to memorize because she wouldn't write them down.

Inside:

- 45 tested recipes — starters and party food, soups and blue-ribbon chilis, Sunday mains, casseroles and potluck legends, breads and biscuits, pies and cobblers, and a handful of quick jars - The Client's Secret — every recipe ends with the one trick the cook let me in on. The recipe gets you most of the way; the secret gets you the ribbon - Crowd food by design — most of these feed six to eight, built for potlucks, tailgates, church suppers and Sunday tables - Full-colour photographs throughout - The stories behind them — whose kitchen, which street, what they were celebrating

Names and details have been changed to protect the families who shared them. The cooking is real. Every one of these survived years in an actual home, getting tweaked the whole time.

For every client who made me taste it before I left — and wouldn't take no for an answer.