Meet Carol!

I will always be a Texas girl, no matter where I live, even though I have never cooked a brisket, and never made enchiladas, or chicken fried anything until I moved to St Louis.  The Texan comes out in the ingredients I use more so than the style of my cooking, although I do like my food spicy, which should come as no surprise.  I'm a little caliente myself.  I have always been fascinated with fresh ingredients and I have a special affinity for Italian food.  Luckily, I got to spend some time in Amalfi learning to cook the Italian way and I think these two strong, seemingly disparate cultures blend very nicely.  I love many things, but cooking is what I do and nothing excites me more than getting creative with ingredients, exquisite or exotic, or just fresh from the garden, and materializing masterpieces from next to nothing.  A glass of wine and good friends to share it with makes it that much better.  Go ahead and get to know me, you'll think I'm amazing!  And funny as hell, too

Meet Aimee!

Aimee (left) and Carol (right) meet in
Knightdale, North Carolina!

I'm a 42 yr old single mom living in Raleigh, NC. I have a fantastic daughter, aged 6, and wonderful friends.  I don’t think I have any particular style of cooking and I KNOW I am surrounded by much better cooks in this fantastic group! Let’s just say I am competent, always learning, willing to take chances and try new things and I pick things up easily. I grew up with PA Dutch (German) and French food. I can make good, rib sticking meals that my mom always made and every holiday I make the traditional food we had growing up. I don’t think anyone really taught me how to cook. I sort of learned on my own out of necessity. I either lived at home or with a boyfriend who was a professional cook (very convenient!) so it wasn't until I met my ex-husband that I really had to learn how to cook because he certainly didn't know how! I'll never forget that first Thanksgiving turkey I butchered (and not in a good way). I don’t have any particular type of food I like to cook. I don’t do overcomplicated stuff either. Mostly because I don’t want to spend a lot of money on ingredients I’m going to potentially ruin!

Meet Sarah K!

Hello everyone! I'm Sarah, the creator of The Garden of Earthly Delights, a food-centric blog for which I write and photograph from my home in Toronto, Canada. 

The love for making, sharing and consuming good food was instilled in me from an early age, and part of my childhood was spent living in close proximity to maternal extended family, who are all incredibly fond of food and see it as a way to bond and show their love. We spent countless days at our grandparents’ – my grandmother always saw to it that there were at the very least three different main dishes on the table and an abundance of rice; my grandfather marinated chicken and ribs for the grill while we collected ripe plums and crabapples from their backyard trees – and countless hours in restaurants, sometimes driving almost an hour outside the city just to visit a particular restaurant that my grandparents (and by extension, the rest of the family) favoured, where they laid dish after dish on the table(s), and carved our meat tableside while we watched with greedy eyes. Over mouthfuls of food we talked and laughed, and ate till we were stuffed, and there were always plenty of leftovers to take home. 

Meet Matt!

I'm Matt, a.k.a. Matt the Butcher!  I hate talking about myself, but here it goes.  I live in central Florida, where it's way too hot for eight months out of the year.  I've been cooking for most of my adult life.  I really can't remember cooking as a kid, or what got me started cooking.  I just know that I do love to cook, for myself and my family, and I get great pleasure watching others enjoy the food that I've prepared.  I don't think I have any particular cooking style so to speak, but some of my favorite things to cook are a nice Boston butt that's been on the smoker for 10 or 12 hours, a Detroit-style pizza that I've been experimenting with, and any odd cuts of meat I can find, which includes most any kind of

Meet Sarah!

My twin brother and I were adopted from Costa Rica when we were three.  We grew up in a very loving home by the best Mom and Dad anyone could wish for.  My Mom was the main cook in the house, always preparing a comforting classic meal that included a protein, a vegetable and a starch.  In 8th grade, my Grandmother moved in with us and did a lot of the cooking and baking.  It was always delicious.  While my Dad didn’t do a lot of the daily cooking, he is quite the master when it comes to things like chili, pasta sauce, ribs and shrimp scampi.  Thinking back, I grew up eating very, very well!

I never took an interest in being in the kitchen except for when it was time to eat.  I now regret this because the beloved foods I grew up eating were lost when my Mom passed away in 2007.  I wish I had taken the time to learn more about how she did things in the kitchen.  I still dream of

Meet Maurita!

My name is Maurita Plouff, and I'm a rustic cook. 

When I was growing up, I was only allowed into the kitchen to dry the dishes. I started cooking when I went off to college, because I figured it would be cheaper to cook for myself. I was right, but along the way, I had to learn to accept some fairly horrible meals. Thus I had an interest in improving rapidly, and fortunately I learned quickly. Cooking soon became an abiding interest. Sometimes I wonder if this is an ongoing act of rebellion, because to this day I refuse to dry the dishes with a towel.

My interest and skills grew over the years. I have worked in the food biz as a personal chef, and my business did well for 7 years, but I'm cooking only for my family and friends now. I prefer to eat local foods in season - they're fresh! they taste fabulous! - and do my own canning and preserving. I suppose I'm an old-fashioned cook.