Our Author

Out of the kitchen, on a jaunt in Williamsburg. — Our author of cooking the kitchen, out of the kitchen, on a jaunt in Williamsburg.

Hi. Thank you so much for visiting Cooking The Kitchen. My name is Barbara, and I am retired from my last job, working as a paralegal. My past includes many different lifetimes as an art student, book designer, graphic designer and freelancer, artist's assistant, paralegal, wife and mom, gardener, quilter, and aspiring potter, to name a few. Some of those lifelines continue today. After retiring, I decided to add one more parallel life to those most loved such as wife, and gardener. I thought it would be fun to channel my energies and creativity into writing a food blog, and thus, Cooking The Kitchen has come into being.

My dad went to farm school, and my parents had a chicken farm before I was born. I like to think that food was my heritage and in my blood because of that farm. Food and cooking are the perfect marriage. I hope you will enjoy the recipes and rambling thoughts of Cooking the Kitchen.

Cooking the Kitchen

One day, some day, when I....so many dreams put aside, and now it is time to engage in Cooking the Kitchen and live the dream.

In the ideal, life would be like living in a small village in Provence, going to the markets, buying seasonal foods, and cooking something everyday. Now there is finally time to do just that, going to the local markets in Brooklyn, or to the Park Slope Food Co-op.

What is fresh? What looks good? What recipes inspire me? What shall I bring home to cook, to nurture myself and my family? Time to step out of the box and try something new. Time to perfect something old, or riff on it further. To me, cooking the kitchen always meant looking inside the fridge, and inventing something with the ingredients that are there. Something out of nothing. Let the magic begin!

My kitchen windows look out upon our garden. I love to look outside as I cook. This is my favorite photo of my husband Dan. Always reminds me of the Crosby Stills Nash lines, "our house is a very very very fine house...."

I have always been interested in cooking, going back to the first Moosewood cookbook, and I must admit that I lean toward vegetarian cooking. I thought this site would be a good place to talk about food and ruminate on life. I hope you will enjoy going on this journey with me.