Muriel Miura has degrees in home economics and spent her career with the Honolulu Gas Co. teaching Islanders about food and cooking. She has written nine cookbooks, and her 1970s TV cooking shows, "New World of Cooking with Muriel" and "Cook Japanese," preceded today's culinary television craze.

So you'd think she'd be a great advocate of spending hours in the kitchen, insistent on cooking everything from scratch.

But you'd be wrong.

Because Miura, like most of the home economists of her day, was a working mother and, what's more, a single working mother. She didn't have time to fuss, and she's bluntly impatient with those who pontificate against shortcuts.

"I'm very pragmatic," said Miura, 72, speaking by phone from the Maryland home of her daughter, Shari Miura Ling — now grown, a physician and working mother herself who also has little time for cooking.

"I remember being criticized for using canned goods or cake mixes, but why should I start from scratch if I can do something that comes out pretty decent in a shorter period of time? I was thinking of the working person, like me," said Miura, who is retired, and with her husband Yoshi Kaminaka, spends part of the year on the Mainland.

She was still thinking of that person when she revised her first and best-selling, cookbook, re-released this month as "Japanese Cooking Hawai'i Style" (Mutual, closed spiral, $26.95).

"Traditional Japanese cooking is very tedious," she said. "It's easier just to go out to a restaurant than to do some of those things. My premise was always to make it attainable."

For example: traditional meshi (Japanese pilaf) dishes require multiple steps, with each ingredient separately pre-cooked before being combined with flavorings and rice. Miura's approach is to collapse the steps — steaming the longer-cooking ingredients with the rice and adding the shorter-cooking ones toward the end of the cooking time. "If I can get away with combining everything and the result is very similar . . . that's fine with me."

Her approach struck a chord with viewers in the 1970s. The gas company was besieged with calls for copies of the recipes she used on her TV show. Thinking ahead to the day that her daughter would need college tuition, Miura in 1975 published a cookbook she hoped would provide extra income.

Instead, success nearly did her in. She knew nothing about publishing and neither did the only printer she knew. The two put together a simple book that was so popular, they soon couldn't keep up with orders. Miura found herself delivering orders after a full day's work as the book went through seven, eight or nine printings — she can't remember how many. Finally, she just refused to do another edition.

Miura learned that writing a book isn't the pathway to riches, but she didn't mind. Her motto might be the old Japanese aphorism "Kodomo no tame ni": "For the sake of the children."

Not only was that first book a legacy for her daughter, subsequent books — such as 2005's "From Hawai'i's Kitchen: Homemade Gifts of Sweets & Treats," which won a 2006 Hale Pa'i award — were penned for her two grandchildren.

"All the books I've done, I did because I wanted my daughter to have my recipes and to know how to cook," she said. "Now she wants me to do the same thing for her kids."

Miura said Hawai'i Japanese cooking is very different from that of Japan: sweeter, the sauces darker-colored, much less fussy both in preparation and presentation, a little more rough and country-style. Even our food words are different.

Though hardly a traditionalist, Miura grew up in a household steeped in the old ways. When she was in third grade, her father — born in Hawai'i but schooled in Japan — insisted that she learn to cook, sew and perform conventional women's tasks. Just after World War II, he opened a tea house, Hananoya, on Vineyard Street, near where Kukui Gardens is now, and she helped in the kitchen there.

So when she applied to college and was asked to declare a major, she was interested in learning about home economics. "I asked, 'What is that?' and they said, 'Cooking and sewing,' and I said, 'I can do that.' "

Graduating from the University of Hawai'i, she actually was more interested in sewing and received her master's in clothing and textiles from Columbia University.

But then she married, had her daughter and took some time off. In 1960, the gas company offered her a part-time job, and she remained there for 33 years, retiring in 1993.

"That job piqued my interest in foods, especially the local foods, the ethnic foods," she said.

In her early days, Caucasians from the Mainland directed the home services departments at local utilities; Miura was one of the first locals to achieve a top position. She recalls being scolded for using canned goods, but later she came to be appreciated for her streamlining capabilities.

"My entire life has been truly dedicated to shortcuts," she said, with a laugh. "I'm just lazy, I guess."

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.