It was so easy.

“Can I take your order?” said the voice at the drive-through.

“Yes, I’ll have a 10-piece Chicken McNuggets, please.”

Three minutes later, for about $5, I drove off with them in a paper bag already dotted with a grease stain.

It was convenient enough, but the McDonald’s nuggets didn’t taste nearly as good as the ones I made from “The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying & Start Making.”

Two years in the making, the cookbook is the vision of Alana Chernila, a food blogger and busy parent based in Western Massachusetts. It’s an ode to the joy of making everyday foods at home, from condiments (mustard, hot sauce) and dairy products (butter, ricotta) to snack foods (potato chips, granola bars) and baked goods (pancakes, corn bread).

“It came about in a roundabout way. I started cooking because I needed to feed my family,” says Chernila, 33, from her home in Great Barrington, where she lives with her husband and two young daughters. “We had children when we were young, and we didn’t have a lot of money, but we wanted to have good food.”

Dovetailing with her budding interest in food, including a Saturday stint selling vegetables at the local farmers’ market, Chernila started a food blog in 2008. “Eating From the Ground Up” (www.eatingfromthegroundup.com) chronicles the virtues of home-cooking and how it affects her family.

One particular experiment inspired “The Homemade Pantry.” She saw that her older daughter, Rosie, really liked yogurt and Chernila decided she could make it herself — “with better milk and in more flavors,” she adds. The feedback from readers was so positive that Chernila knew she was on to something.