When I started teaching classes in cooking, I thought that most of my students were there to master a few fail-safe recipes they could use for entertaining.

But, to my surprise, most of them really wanted help with the routine daily hassle of feeding themselves. “I can't keep reading more and more recipes, and hunting up ingredients,” they said. “Even the so-called shortcut cookbooks usually take too much time and effort.”

To solve this problem, I developed the “ethnic” charts you'll find on the next three pages. Using them will greatly simplify the process of creating intriguinging and appealing dishes.

These charts are primarily meant to serve as general guidelines, but if you keep them in mind while doing your marketing, you'll find them to be of great help in everyday meal planning. This is because they show how you can use the same basic ingredients—ones that are available all the time in the market—in an exciting variety of ways. And then, by varying the spices and seasonal accompaniments, they suggest how you can easily create many new and interesting “international” menus.

For instance, during the winter months, you could look at the cold weather cuisines of Russia, Germany, and Scandanavia, because the meat, vegetables, and fruits they call for will be fresh and inexpensive at that time of year.

In the summer, you can depend on the hot weather countries of Italy, Greece, Mexico, and India for suggested menus—countries which feature corn, tomatoes, and other produce that's plentiful during the warm weather.

Then, there are the all-weather countries, America, France, and China, which have a great variety of ingredients available from the different regions of their land, all year long.

But, how does this actually work? Let's try it. First, look over the charts on the following pages, and then I'll show how you can put them to use.