A chat with Rebecca

Seasoned with Love is a unique cookbook that offers a collection of national favorites and recipes inspired by many cultures. This cookbook also includes cooking secrets, helpful tips and interesting tidbits.

In Seasoned with Love, there are recipes for everything from healthy fruit shakes with tofu to tantalizing appetizers and divine deserts.

I inherited my love of cooking from my late Norwegian/Swiss grandmother and French grandfather. My grandmother Clarice taught me the secrets of creative cooking. My friends and family come from a variety of cultural backgrounds.

I made my first steamed puffy eggs, which consisted of milk, eggs and cheese-when I was just seven years old. My younger brother loved them and I've been cooking every since. I spent part of my childhood in Chicago and Seattle and lived in Africa for 12 years. It was in Africa that I developed my love of cooking.

Seasoned With Love:
A collection of best-loved recipes inspired by over 40 cultures

In July 1999 I was selected as a winner in the Better Homes and Gardens Standouts Recipe Contest and in August 2000 I published my first poem in Tides of Memory. Two of my recipes were recently published in a chef's cookbook called: Cookin' with Chef Johnny & Friends.

I enjoy sharing cooking secrets and it is my desire is to teach others about the world through cooking. I believe in creative cooking and incorporate herbs and/or spices into almost all my recipes.

I continue to work on new ideas and encourage others in their love of cooking. In my world travels I become acquainted with the cuisine of Europe, Africa and America. While working in a specialty grocery store I also became interested in foods from many other countries.

My cookbook is now available. A portion of each sale with be donated to non-profit organizations and charities to feed the hungry and lift the spirits of those in need around the world.

I'm continuing to work on new recipes and add them to this site. My desire is to encourage others in their love of cooking and I decided to create this website so cooks could link to Cooking Sites.

Customer reviews on Amazon and other websites can seriously affect book sales, and don't publishers know it.

By Renee Tawa, L.A. Times Staff Writer

In the courtship of Rebecca Johnson — who's No. 4 on Amazon.com's list of top customer book reviewers — publishers and authors are told up front how to land a spot on her dance card: Don't send novels or unpublished manuscripts, and please no books that include violence, nudity or swearing.

Not if you want to bedazzle Johnson, who gets 40 to 60 free books a month, along with checklists from publishers asking her to mark the upcoming titles she's interested in receiving at no charge. Play along, and your shot at a rave review is far better than it would be with professional critics.

No one is saying that the Harold Blooms and Dale Pecks and other literati should be looking over their shoulders, but professional critics are no longer the only game in town. These days, as the Internet continues to reshape our notion of community, amateur critics are posting reviews across the cultural spectrum — from film to books and more — on discussion boards, blogs and other sites.

"It's all part of this culture we're now seeing where, 'My opinion is just as valid as the guys at the L.A. Times,' " said Thomas Kunkel, dean of the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. "It may not be as informed or educated and is maybe wrongheaded, but there's no question that a reader has as much right to publish their own opinion."

Everyday readers also have a shot at building a potentially huge following of their own. On a mega-site like Amazon, where amateur reviews are packaged with bells and whistles, the collective voice of the consumer sometimes is powerful enough to help sales soar or sputter. In fact, the opinions of people such as ( ) on Amazon and other sites are cutting into territory that once was the province of mainstream critics alone.

Johnson, 36, is a freelance writer... with a master's in education. She is known for her relentlessly sunny reviews and once even provided a blurb on a book jacket; she'll send a book back to a publisher rather than write a bad review. In the realm of criticism, there's room for both Amazon reviewers, who weigh in with impunity, and the somber voices of professional critics, Johnson said.

"I tend to be able to analyze books really efficiently. Authors say I'm insightful and I have a gift for extracting the essence of a book," she said. "I feel like I'm part of the reviewing community."