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Cook's Illustrated & Adult Learning Theory.

I received a subscription to Cook's Illustrated for my birthday last year, an excellent instructional magazine for cooks.

For each recipe, Cook's Illustrated first devotes an entire page (sometimes two) to the challenges that the author overcame in developing and testing this recipe, which I initially thought was all worthless jibber-jabber. I've since realized that the whole point of the play-by-play recipe evolution story is to tell me why certain arcane steps are necessary. By more fully engaging my brain, it's helping me not to skip a step in the process they've outlined. By involving me, I learn.

Another huge advantage of Cook's Illustrated is that the authors are always kind enough to always provide the weight equivalent for flour in baked good recipes.

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