The Cooks Next Door

Welcome to The Cooks Next Door — a brand new blog whose goal is to inspire you to creativity in your kitchen, richer times with family and friends, and a greater enjoyment of the gift of food.

We want to provide you with seasonal recipes that are delicious and achievable and encourage you in your efforts to provide a well-rounded diet to your family and friends.

We plan to post daily, Monday-Friday, with at least one recipe each day that has been tested by us. We have some great topics to discuss, weekly features and even a few giveaways planned.

Here’s what a typical week will look like:

Monday — “Market Fresh”: This post will focus on what is fresh and seasonal at the Farmer’s Market (or supermarket) this week and give you a recipe for using it.

Tuesday/Thursday – We plan to use these two days each week to give you a variety of topics including: Ingredient Focus, Hospitality, Desserts, Simple Suppers, Gluten-Free Goodness, Tea Time, Soup Pot, Yeast Breads, and of course, Giveaways!

Wednesday — “Off the Shelf”: Each week we’ll pick a cookbook, food memoir, or magazine to review, and include a recipe for you to try.

Friday — “Weekend Fare”: This feature will appear every Friday with something simple and delicious that you can enjoy over the weekend.

We are very excited about all the wonderful recipes and posts we have planned. We hope you will enjoy this blog and find it helpful whatever your current place in life is — cooking for one, cooking for a large family, learning to cook, or just enjoying the pictures.

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We are thrilled that you are here.  Our ideas and perspectives are sometimes different and yet our goals are the same – to cook delicious food with fresh, seasonal ingredients and to always have people with whom to share it. So we’ve joined together to bring you into our kitchens, into our markets, and into our cooking lives.

We came up with the idea and general plan for this blog in the Summer of 2009 during a play date.  After a few months of planning and discussion and after a difficult time coming up with a name, The Cooks Next Door was born.

We welcome your feedback, suggestions, and questions – you can find our contact information on the side bar. We hope you enjoy!

JUST A LITTLE NOTE:

While we, the cooks, certainly espouse supporting local farmers, eating healthy, and cooking from scratch, we are also moms, feeding our families on budgets. And while we might choose to splurge on ingredients, shop at the farmer’s market, and use organic food, that does not comprise all of our shopping.  We both shop at conventional grocery stores and neither of us feed our families only organic food.  You might even occasionally find a prepared food in our cupboards, refrigerators,  or freezers…we’re just saying…

We know that you won’t think less of us and perhaps you’ll feel even more at home here at The Cooks Next Door.