I’ve watched plenty of YouTube videos over the years, but until a couple weeks ago, few of them involved food. And none involved a potty-mouthed grandmother with a sugary sweet voice whipping up muffins, fried rice and chicken cacciatore.

So after flipping through Granny PottyMouth’s “Fast as F*ck Cookbook,” I had to find out what this lady was all about and if her book is just a gimmick for fans of a YouTube celebrity who looks like a stereotypical grandma but swears like a stereotypical sailor. Turns out, she’s pretty funny (if you don’t mind some sassy language) and her cookbook is a solid one for beginners or those without a lot of time or a big grocery budget.

Peggy Glenn has made a name for herself as Granny PottyMouth, with a respectable YouTube subscriber base of 222,000 followers. Glenn — who describes herself as a “legit granny” of two grown grandsons — learned to cook from her mother and grandmother.

“They made do with little and made it taste like (stuff) you’d feed the rich people,” she writes in the book’s introduction. “I’ve been a military wife with a skimpy food budget, a single mom with a skimpier food budget and three more mouths to feed and a volunteer at soup kitchens where people were grateful for something nourishing and hot.”

Granny PottyMouth offers her follower four principles to guarantee “…food magic in your life”: stock and then replenish your pantry; do some prep ahead of time; sprinkle in some fresh (stuff) as time and money allow; and experiment freely.

“It doesn’t take a (bleep-ing) genius to put a delicious meal on the table in record time, but it does take some ingenuity, some prep and some planning,” she writes. “Don’t freak out. I don’t mean spreadsheets and (stuff), just a stocked pantry, a good idea of what you and your family will eat and the willingness to cut corners and give up the ‘from scratch’ SuperCook cape.”

None of the recipes in Granny PottyMouth’s book are especially complicated and most use pantry staples and inexpensive ingredients, which is perfect given her intended audience. For people without much experience in the kitchen — or time or money for elaborate dishes — Granny PottyMouth offers a wide variety of recipes that are easy to follow and presented in a way that is not intimidating.

Her signature fried rice provides detailed, step-by-step directions for a dish easily tailored to individual taste using the ingredients you have on hand. The Mexican sweet potato topped with a mix of black beans, corn, salsa and spices isn’t earth-shattering in its creativity, but resulted in a tasty dish that reheated well for lunch.

With fall-like temperatures putting me in the mood to bake, I gave Granny’s “Cocoa Pumpkin Muffin-gasm” recipe a try. I made my first batch with walnuts following her recipe exactly, and was pleased with the moist, flavorful muffins (even if I did slightly burn the bottoms). I made them again a few days later, but substituted mini chocolate chips for the walnuts — a choice I’ll repeat next time I bake these muffins.

Cocoa-Pumpkin Muffin-gasm

Yields 12-14 muffins

1 3/4 cups (220 g) all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

2/3 cup (150 g) butter, softened

3/4 cup (165 g) dark brown sugar, packed

1/3 cup (80 ml) molasses

1 egg, beaten, room temperature

1 cup (180 g) pumpkin puree

1/2 cup (40 g) smashed walnuts, optional

Cream cheese or whipped cream, optional

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and grease a muffin tin or use cupcake papers.

In bowl #1, mix the flour, salt, cocoa, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg.

In bigger bowl #2, mix the butter, sugar and molasses with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the egg and pumpkin and blend well — but not until frothy.

Add about 1/2 cup (40 g) of the walnuts to the creamy mix and stir with a spatula. Gently fold the dry stuff from bowl #1 into the creamy pumpkin mixture. Use a spatula or a big spoon — do not over mix. Spoon into muffin tins.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes and do the toothpick test. Optional: Serve with cream cheese or whipped cream.

Comments are not available on this story.

« Previous

’15 Minute Vegan: On a Budget’ has value for carnivores, too

Next »

When perfection is the goal, this cookbook makes it easy as pie