It's always fun to introduce someone new to the idea of Cooking With Friends. This past weekend, a friend came to visit us from Washington, D.C. He's single, young, and a doctor, working long hours. He never, ever cooks for himself. It's just me, he says, and then there are the dishes to clean ...
Kitchen Chronicles
Leftover Lentils
Last week, Suzy and I made a ton of salads and wound up with a huge amount of leftover lentils. Just as I was about to toss what we didn’t use into the garbage, I decided to hold off in the hopes that I could find a future use for them. They sat for several days in my vegetable crisper as I waited ...
Serendipity in Cooking
When three of our friends were making muffins recently, they were having such a great time talking, laughing and hanging out that they forgot...the milk. It's an occupational hazard of those of us who cook together that we are thinking about the food but also about what we are saying, learning from ...
Teach Your Friends Well
Sometimes cooking with a friend can be selfless. Yesterday was one of those days. I got together with my friend Christina in order to demonstrate the simplicity of making homemade granola. You see, her family loves the Bare Naked brand and she can’t seem to buy enough of it! That being said, the ...
Five Voices
An hour before my friend Christine was coming over to make Cherry Almond Granola for our Breakfast Foods swap, I was really excited. I still hadn't really heard about her trip to Spain and Morocco, we needed to talk about planning an auction later this month for a local hospital, and just needed to ...
Lakeside Communal Cooking
It was opening weekend at our lake club, the unofficial start of summer. To celebrate, we gathered with seven families (20 children) for our 5th annual lakeside BBQ feast. With four picnic tables and two charcoal grills, we took over about 400 square feet of prime picnic space. Hot dogs, hamburgers, ...
Evite Invites
As we planned our breakfast foods swap this week, several partners changed, the location of the swap was moved, and the number of participants fluctuated from 11 to 9 back to 11 again (an important number as each cooking team is making food for the whole bunch). You would think these changes ...
Two Men and a BBQ
The other night, my husband was tending our BBQ, grill tools in hand, while chicken sausages, hot dogs and burgers sizzled in unison. While waiting for the right moment to flip, he snatched a hot dog and a bun, stepped away from the BBQ for a few seconds and slathered it with ketchup, mustard and ...
Memorial Day
My friend Ellen, who has four kids under the age of 7 and whose husband is serving in Iraq, had an incredible reaction when she heard about Cooking With Friends. That's just what we--military wives--do, she said. The women bond in unfamiliar cities and towns while husbands are away, over the ...
Grill Girl
My husband, who I cook with all the time, suggested casually "Why don't you turn on the grill?" He continued chopping tomatoes, onions and peppers for the salad to go with our steak. Me? The grill? I cook almost every night, and love to try new dishes. I prepare enormous amounts of food to be ...