Trisha Yearwood is a Grammy-winning, multi-platinum-selling recording artist, but she's also developing an entirely new fan base outside of country music, thanks to her auxiliary career as cookbook author. She has two best-selling collections of recipes on shelves, both of which were co-authored by her mother and sister and both of which were written in a surprisingly unconventional way.

"The first one was easier. It was mostly out of our shoeboxes of recipes, things we'd been making our entire lives," Trisha tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel of 'Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen.' "The second book ['Home Cooking With Trisha Yearwood: Stories and Recipes to Share With Family and Friends'], we had to extend the net. I talked to some successful cookbook authors, and one said, 'You wrote all your recipes? You can't continue to do that.' I guess these successful big-time authors hire people to develop recipes."

Known for her ability to beautifully interpret the material of a wide range of songwriters, Trisha says her publisher was dubious when the singer wanted to actually write the book she was authoring. "The first book, the publisher said, 'We'll hire a writer and write this in your words,'" she reveals. "I said, 'I really want a shot at writing this myself. I liked to write in school. I was an A student. If you hate what I write, we'll talk.' They liked what I wrote. I really didn't know what I was getting into."

Trisha enjoys cooking for her family -- which includes superstar husband Garth Brooks and Garth's three daughters from his first marriage -- on their ranch in Oklahoma. But while Garth is moonlighting as a Las Vegas performer, Trisha says it's her step-daughters' busy lives that are the most problematic in maintaining family time. "The Vegas gig is about one weekend a month, and we go together. Most people think he's living in Vegas, but he's not. The deal was that if he did this, it wouldn't change our lives at home. The harder part is coordinating around the girls' schedules. If we have a home-cooked meal on the table three nights a week, that's good."

So can we expect a third cookbook from Trisha? That might require a lot more home cooking experiments. "Nobody has thousands of recipes in their shoeboxes," she says. "If we'd continue, I don't know what we'd do. We'll just have to see."

In spite of her huge success as a cookbook author, the Georgia native says she is far from a culinary expert. "I'm not a chef. I'm a cook," she says. "I learned from a great cook, my mom."

Rumored to be working on a new album, Trisha is also a columnist for People magazine. She can be reached at country@peoplemag.com.

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