The Hip Girl’s Guide to the Kitchen
HarperCollins (2014)
With the Hip Girl’s Guide to the Kitchen you can become a confident cook—even if the drawer with the take-out menus is the only part of your kitchen you currently use! Kate Payne shows you how to master basic cooking techniques—boiling, baking, and sautéing—and simplifies the process of fancy ones, like jamming and preserving, dehydrating, braising, roasting, infusing, and pickling. With this straightforward and fun guide, you can stock up your kitchen with the ingredients, tools, and appliances you’ll actually use. You’ll also learn how to decode recipes and alter them to make them gluten-free, dairy-free, or vegan.
The Hip Girl’s Guide to the Kitchen includes advice and instructions on how to make both classic meals and foods that are typically bought, such as yogurt; ice cream; flavored salt; oil and vinegar infusions; kimchi; aioli; jam; granola; bread; and fruit leather—even liqueurs, iced teas, and vegetable juices. With fun line drawings, sidebars full of tips and tricks, and lists of resources, Kate Payne sets you up for success and shows you how to unlock your inner kitchen prowess.
The cyber sphere is boiling over with tantalizing food porn: photographs of enviable appetizers, exotic dinners, and pristine cakes and cookies; however, it is one thing to collect, and another to execute. The Hip Girl’s Guide to the Kitchen is for those who dream of impressing their friends with a Pinterest-worthy dinner party, but who may lack the know-how (and the cash) to turning their hoard of recipes into reality.
Divided into three sections: Stocking Up, Feeding Yourself, and Feeding Others, The Hip Girl’s Guide to the Kitchen is brimming with helpful tips, all with budget in mind. From what you need, where to get it, and how to prolong the use of both your tools and ingredients, Kate shows how rewarding and easy it can be to turn your kitchen into a homemade and healthy haven. Revealing both the health and environmental benefits of cooking and baking with fresh, whole ingredients, Kate challenges readers to ditch the take-out menus, providing advice on basic cooking methods (boiling, baking, and sautéing), and more advanced techniques like jamming, fermenting, pickling, and infusing for those who are really ready to reassess their relationship with the grocery store. Each chapter ends with Kate’s tried-and-true recipes for everything from granola to yogurt, homemade bread to mayonnaise.
At the heart of The Hip Girl’s Guide to the Kitchen is the important role that food plays in our well-being and our relationships with others. Kate’s enthusiasm and passion is contagious; she inspires her readers to take charge of their nutrition in mastering basic meals and reducing waste, and she provides creative ways to share the fruits and the labor with fun, food-making parties.
For retail inquiries, please email HarperCollins Special Sales or call (212) 207-7104
UK sales enquiries, please contact The Book Service (TBS) via email or call (+44) 01206 255678
The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking
HarperCollins (2011)
With The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking, it’s possible and even convenient to create an inviting space for living and entertaining on a budget. From unique decor ideas to growing strawberries on your fire escape, Kate Payne shares fun, low-cost (and often free!) creative solutions that will make anyone feel more accomplished in minutes.
User-friendly “how-to” sidebars, illustrations, and tips and tricks throughout the book offer easy-to-follow recipes and do-it-yourself craft suggestions for making your home hip, comfortable, and inviting. Keep in mind that this is not your grandmother’s handbook and it’s not the kind of wisdom your mom knows how to impart. Modern women need a modern approach to domestic pleasures—a guide to doing household things on our own terms, because most of this stuff isn’t as hard as we’ve been led to believe. Don’t worry, she’s not asking you to host Tupperware parties or iron your underwear. But as all beginning home keepers know, a sure fire way to feel bad about ourselves is to consult Martha Stewart. So ditch that 2-inch thick handbook, dust off your pots and pans, and join Kate on this journey to incorporating creativity and self-sufficiency on the home front.
For retail inquiries, please email HarperCollins Special Sales or call (212) 207-7104
UK sales enquiries, please contact The Book Service (TBS) via email or call (+44) 01206 255678
Praise for The Hip Girl’s Guide to the Kitchen:
I love, love, love, love The Hip Girl’s Guide to the Kitchen! Every parent should give their teenager a copy – and get a second one for themselves. I swear, author Kate Payne is some kind of genius. Perhaps this seems like high praise for what is just a beginner’s introduction to cooking, but every page is filled with a massive amount of truly helpful information. Every time I open this book, I’m staggered by some nugget of information that had never before occurred to me, and I’m kind of a kitchen genius myself. Some basic recipes are provided, but mostly this is all about setting up a new kitchen and understanding how to use it, all in a hip-girl fashion. This means understanding modern food craft, paying attention to what’s happening in biotech agriculture, and being nutritionally healthy, and all the while bearing in mind that age-old household goal: save money by being savvy.
—Tracey T., Powell’s Books Blog
Praise for The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking:
My daughter is moving into her first apartment next year. Along with boxes of second hand linens and furniture from the attic, she’s getting this fresh, modern, and enthusiastic primer on all things housekeeping.
— Eugenia Bone, New York Times writer and author of The Denver Post’s Well-Preserved blog and the Well-Preserved bookLiving comfortably in your home is endlessly rewarding, and all it takes is attention and creativity. I’m so convinced that I’m taking Kate’s advice on bread baking this very week!
— Zora O’Neill, co-author of Forking Fantastic! Put the Party back in Dinner PartyI am a huge fan of The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking! Kate nailed it in this humorous, creative guide for fabulous, chic, and easy-on-the-wallet ideas. It’s a joy to read a book that makes you laugh and get great ideas from—another must have for my girlfriends.
— Kim Barnouin, co-author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Skinny BitchThe Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking is a wonderfully insightful, encouraging, non-perfectionist guide for creating a pleasurable home without killing yourself (or the planet). It’s full of information your mother forgot to tell you, that will help you live well and sustainably, and have fun in the process.
— Sally Schneider, Founder of ‘the improvised life’ website, author of The Improvisational Cook and A New Way to Cook.This should be required reading for anyone with a roof over their heads. You’ll find yourself returning to it again and again, whether you’re looking for party ideas or which side of the place setting the napkin goes on.
— Ashley English, author of the Homemade Living book series and small measure blogThe Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking will release your hidden domestic talents. Kate’s friendly voice will transform even the most clueless guy or gal into a homemaking marvel. Loaded with smart, frugal, and pragmatic tips, it is the ideal home-life manual for the modern age.
— Marisa McLellan, creator of foodinjars.com
Kate Payne is an author, freelance writer and educator. She teaches writing workshops and classes on home food preservation and other food-based instruction both privately and at culinary instruction schools and centers... 
