One ingredient of success: love of cooking

SEATTLE — After 19 years as a homemaker, Carlean Johnson found herself newly divorced, unemployed and with four kids to support.

Fearing she didn't have the skills for the working world and reluctant to leave the children for an office job, Johnson turned to what she knew best: cooking.

That was 20 years ago. Since then, Johnson, now 61, has sold more than 1 million copies of her four cookbooks and is at work on another.

"I'd always enjoyed cooking, always enjoyed trying something new and was always going back to it," Johnson said in a recent telephone interview from her home in Gig Harbor, about 50 miles southwest of Seattle.

"From my experience you really need to do something that you love. Whenever I've tried to stray from doing something I love, it never works out as successfully."

Johnson is author of "Six Ingredients or Less," a self-published cookbook. She used the recipe formula for other books based on chicken, pasta and casseroles, and cooking light.

When she was divorced in 1980, her four children were ages 9 to 17. In need of money, she thought back to her success with publishing a church cookbook. Johnson used her savings and gave herself two years to write and publish one of her own.

She started by asking 500 people, including friends and family, how they cooked and what they would want in an "ideal" cookbook. She found that they, like herself, had too many things to do to spend too much time in the kitchen. They wanted quick, easy everyday recipes with as few ingredients as possible. Most of those ingredients should be readily available, preferably those normally on hand.

Johnson initially tried using just three ingredients, but she found it too limiting.

Johnson sought recipes by eating in restaurants and at other people's homes. And she tried all the ones she already had with one goal: to simplify them and pare the ingredients in each to six. The recipes have short directions, and many can be made in under 30 minutes. Cindy Adams, 49, of Olympia, bought Johnson's first "Six Ingredients" cookbook 18 years ago. "I was so impressed," she said. "I had very young children, and I was looking for something that would make getting in and out of the kitchen easy for me."

Adams has since used all four cookbooks and has taught her children to cook from them. Each book features 350 to 500 recipes and is 224 pages in length.

"It's not a tabletop book nor a fancy one," Johnson said. "It's meant to be used in the kitchen on a daily basis."

Willard Hogle, 73, of Seattle, received the books as a gift four years ago, and both he and his wife use them. "The cookbooks are very easy to read, easy to follow and the recipes are fail-proof," he said.