The Crabby Cookbook: a Trove of Recipe Ideas for Crabby Cooks Looking to Please Picky Eaters

Jessica Harper has broken the kitchen ice.

She has finally said what all us moms have wanted to scream out loud for so long as we discuss complex dishes with others as breezily as Julia Child, while on the inside we are thinking- “my child would never go near that fancy beef stroganoff with a ten foot pole! Never mind the fact that I would need an entire week’s vacation from the world just to pull off such a dish!”

Life for a mom just isn’t like some French bistro. Instead of serving daring foodies with a palette for any new taste, we usually end up over-worked and under-thanked private chefs for the most picky eaters in the world- our children.

When my kids were younger, I can remember buying the ingredients, copying down a friend’s elegant recipe for a chicken dish with dried fruit, and returning home to eventually abandon the quest to the urgent cries for macaroni and cheese and chicken fingers. As a Mom, you can work on infiltrating a child’s monomaniac taste with healthy variety, yet the crying, whining, and foot stopping that often results makes you just want to load everyone in the car and hit the drive-thru.

Jessica Harper realized that this is enough to make any Mom a little CRABBY!

Throughout her Crabby Cookbook, Jessica Harper shares her horror stories as a mom with little time to cook for kids with picky demands. Her stories make you laugh out loud as you navigate the kitchen with ease directed by her almost-effortless recipes that come complete with survival tips and strategies for the mission of being a mom.

Here’s a sample story and recipe from her fun and funny book:

Baked French Toast (That’s Actually from Illinois)

“I love things you can make the night before. You just wake up, throw this in the oven, and spend the next hour cursing at the Sunday crossword puzzle. The only trouble with making this the night before is that you have to make it the night before. Having just cleaned up the kitchen after dinner, you have to haul out eggs and bread and start cooking again. If you are a crabby cook, you will be exponentially crabbier by the time you go to bed, maybe even cursing the brunch guest who caused you all this trouble. Luckily, such feelings usually subside while you sleep, and when, the next morning, you pop this sucker in the oven, you feel downright smug.”

Ingredients
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, for the baking dish
1 loaf good-quality white bread
6 large eggs
3 cups milk
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
For the topping
¾ cup (packed) dark brown sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
2 tablespoons maple syrup
¾ cup chopped pecans pr walnuts (optional)

Directions
1.    Butter a 9×13-inch baking dish. If your bread has excess crust, as challah does, remove some of it; otherwise, leave the crust on. Cut the loaf into ¾-inch think slices. Arrange the slices in two layers in the baking dish, breaking them as needed to fill in the empty spaces.
2.    Whisk the eggs, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg together in a bowl. Pour the mixture over the bread. Cover the dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate it overnight.
3.    About 1 ¼ hours before you want to serve the French toast, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
4.    Prepare the topping: Combine the brown sugar, butter, and maple syrup in a bowl and mix well. Stir in the nuts, if you’re using them. Spread the mixture evenly over the bread.
5.    Bake the French toast, uncovered, until it is puffed, bubbly, and golden brown, about 1 hour. (You should be able to get through at least two sections of the Sunday Times before it’s done.)
6.    This dish looks fantastic right out of the oven, so serve it right away, with maple syrup and extra butter.

Variation:
Instead of reading the paper while the French toast bakes, you could jump on the treadmill in a preemptive strike against calories, but I personally am way too crabby to exercise before breakfast.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of the cookbook to facilitate this review.

Stacy DeBroff

Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.com and social and digital consultancy, Influence Central, is a social media strategist, attorney, and best-selling parenting author. A sought-after expert for national media, she trend-spots regularly with national brands and speaks frequently to national and international audiences on a wide range of subjects, including influencer marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and consumer trends. A passionate cook, gardener, reader, and tennis player, she adores this new chapter of post-college-age parenting.