Cookbook by Longboat resident makes recipes easy to read

Kathleen Greig hopes to make cooking and understanding recipes easier with her first cookbook, “Inspired Cuisine.”

The book includes recipes from various cuisines due to her love for international food and trying new recipes. It includes everything from nostalgic comfort foods, to Spanish tapas, French country cooking and Cajun dishes of Louisiana.

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Greig breaks up her book into small bites, appetizers, soups, lunches, dinners, sides, desserts and miscellaneous recipes. In her index, she has the recipes organized by course, cuisine and recipe title so it is easy to find exactly what you are looking for.

“Many cookbooks usually lay out their recipes in a paragraph format,” said Greig. “From what I have experienced, it makes it very easy to lose your place. That's one aspect, where I'm trying to do bullet points instead and make it a step-by-step guide. The pictures I put in there show what it's supposed to look like at significant steps. I find that people get really confused and intimidated when there are a lot of photos, but I want to make sure to show what the most important steps are supposed to look like.”

Born in Budapest, Hungary, Greig moved to the U.S. as child. She then settled in Canada in her early adult years to be near her sister and ended up working in marketing and sales. Greig bought a condo on Longboat Key 35 years ago and has been dividing her time between Canada and Florida ever since.

Greig’s love for cooking is inspired by her mother. She said that she grew up watching her mother cook and picked up tricks while having after-school conversations with her. Greig started cooking for herself in college because none of her roommates knew how.  

In the early years of her marriage, she started having dinner parties with her friends. Each couple would alternate houses to spend time together and try different recipes from around the world. 

“In the early 2000s, entertaining was at its peak,” said Greig. “ So when my husband and I got married, we both loved to entertain. We both like food. We had a good social circle. So we started doing a lot of entertaining. We had everything to go with it. We had a huge house that we built. So we would do something special and bond over what we love so much: food.”

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Since she was experimenting with a variety of recipes constantly, she would write down the ones that she enjoyed to make them again later. Greig said that this got out of hand because she filled about three notebooks full of recipes. 

Greig decided that her recipe logs were something that she wanted to share with the world. This is how her “Inspired Cuisine” blog was born four years ago. She now has about 800 recipes online and about 6,000 viewers a month.

The cookbook was a natural thing after having the blog for a couple years. It was a tangible way to see all her hard work and passion for these recipes and cooking in general. 

Even though she isn't entertaining as often as she used to, Greig still tries many different recipes and puts them on her blog. She gets inspiration from anywhere including dishes from restaurants or a homemade dinner from a friend. 

Greig shared that the excitement of her debut book has her already dreaming about her next book focusing on a specific cuisine or style of cooking.

“I like to eat good food,” said Greig. “It is just that plain and simple. It is natural that cooking is one of my favorite pastimes.  I mean why do people cook? Because you have to, but you have to like it. I have a lot of friends here who unfortunately don't cook at all. I don't quite get that. I'd rather cook than eat out every time.”