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For decades we’ve been hearing a steady stream of diet advice, mostly from people trying to sell us something. But the more we follow their advice, the fatter and more unhealthy we seem to get. At some point, don’t you have to wonder if maybe their advice has more to do with what they’re selling than with what’s actually good for us?

And here’s the irony: Not only is the processed food they’re selling us not better for us, it doesn’t even taste as good.

If you’ve got a real medical condition that means you, unlike most healthy people, really can’t eat fat (or carbs, or sugar, or wheat, or … whatever) then by all means, don’t eat the food that you can’t handle. But for most of us, the food that people were eating before all the diet gurus started advertising on late-night TV is still what we really ought to be eating.

That’s what this site is all about. Forget about light versions, and low-fat — and especially “lite” and “lo-fat”. Once they start making up new words for what they’re selling, you can bet what it’s not is food. Instead I make everything with real butter, whole milk, bacon fat … and yes, sugar and white flour, too.

Sure, I know, those are processed foods, and not as good for you as whole grain alternatives. But compared to the corn syrup and textured soy protein in manufactured foods, I’ll take those in moderation.

The key to all this is simply knowing what you’re really eating. And the only way to do that is to make it yourself, from scratch, with the simplest ingredients you can.

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    Cooking used to be all about making food that tasted good. But somewhere along the way, we seem to have decided the diet-of-the-week was more important. How to Cook Like Your Grandmother is a return to recipes and techniques that are based on what tastes good, not on junk science and fad diets. You won't find the words lite, low, lean, free or skim anywhere. This is all real food, cooked the way Grandma would have done it.

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    People have been making and eating food as long as there have been people. And food. But somehow we've let ourselves believe that it's something only experts can do "right". That's where Starting From Scratch comes in. I'm not saying you'll go from zero to hero just by reading it, but at least now you'll know what those self-proclaimed experts are talking about.

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