Featured Food Blog: Cook the Story

Name: Christine
Blog: Cook the Story
Twitter: @CookTheStory
Location: Florida

Describe your culinary style.
I love good old fashioned comfort food but I know that those meals aren’t good for me or my family (except as treats!). So instead, I find ways to make them fresher and lighter. There’s still a lot of comfort there but it’s comfort we can feel good about.

What is the main source of inspiration for your recipes?
I share the recipes that I make for my family. For us I cook what’s in season or is readily available at our grocery store. I develop recipes that are simple so that I can juggle them with my two young children. So that meal times are stress-free (or as stress-free as meals with a 4 year old and a 1 year old can me) I also make sure that the recipes include simple flavors that my kids will enjoy while also having added little punches that will delight my and my husband’s more adult tastes.

For someone new to your blog, which recipe do you recommend they try first?
Right now I’m enjoying some wonderful cool-weather flavors like squash, Brussels sprouts, beans and mushrooms. Here’s a favourite recipe for each of these hearty autumnal foods:

• Lazy Girl’s Brussels Sprout Gratin
• Welsh Rarebit Canapés
• 13 Bean Soup Topped with Garlicky Manchego Toast 
• Oven Roasted Sausage, Tomatoes and Pearl Onions over Spaghetti Squash

Click photo for recipe

If you could have one food while stranded on a desert island, what would it be? 
Cheese. Because cheese makes everything better.

What is your ultimate guilty food pleasure? 
Umm…cheese? There’s something strange that I used to make as a teenager that I still do today when in search of comfort. It’s perfect when I feel particularly sad (or am particularly hungover). Note that I do not recommend this as a recipe for anyone to try. I’m pretty sure that nobody would like it but me. And please do not judge my recipe-development skills by this admission! Here goes. It’s called a Mozza Melt. Take 2 slices of sandwich bread and put them on a dinner plate. Lay 3 thick slices of mozzarella cheese onto each slice. Microwave until the cheese is ooey gooey and stringy at the edges but is still slightly more solid in the middle (this just means that it won’t be too hot to eat it *immediately*). Eat with a knife and fork. Repeat over and over until sadness or hangover has gone away (or until you come to your senses and realize how much cheese you’ve already eaten).

Define Yummly.
For food to be more than just sustenance it has to say something about who is and isn’t there when you eat it. Who are you sharing your meal with? What memories are you making while you eat? What are you remembering as you bite down? For something to be Yummly it has to look good and taste good. But more importantly it has to be simmered with time and place. That’s how it goes from being good to being an experience. To being Yummly. On my blog I give the stories that go with the food hoping that the recipes are an experience and are always Yummly.