Meet the 35 Cooks
Real home cooks from across the country, sharing their lives and their recipes one week at a time.
Stories told through food · since 2016
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Aaliyah Robinson
Aaliyah is twenty-two, an LSU senior, and the youngest contributor on the RecipeSpinoff team. She is a first-generation college student from north Baton Rouge who cooks on a dorm budget with a hot plate, a mini fridge, and more ambition than counter space. She writes for the broke college kids who think they cannot cook. You can. She will show you how.
Amanda Kowalczyk
Amanda is a special ed teacher in Chicago, a mom of three-year-old twins, and a woman who lost her best friend to a fentanyl overdose at twenty-one. She cooks on a budget that would make a Whole Foods cashier weep — feeding a family of four for under seventy-five dollars a week — because she believes good food doesn't require a fancy kitchen or a fancy paycheck. She finished Babcia Rose's gołąbki after the funeral because that's what Babcia would have wanted. That's who Amanda is.
Bobby Tran
Bobby Tran was born in a refugee camp in Arkansas to parents who fled Saigon with nothing. He grew up in Houston straddling two worlds — Vietnamese at home, Texan everywhere else — and learned to cook from his mother's pho and a neighbor's BBQ smoker. He's a former shrimper, a recovering alcoholic, a divorced dad of three, and the guy who marinates brisket in fish sauce and lemongrass because he doesn't believe in borders, especially when it comes to flavor.
Brenda Novak
Brenda is a forty-eight-year-old long-haul trucker and mom of two from Grand Island, Nebraska, who cooks on the road with a crockpot plugged into her semi's cigarette lighter. She lost her sister to domestic violence and carries that loss quietly. She writes for the working moms who are gone a lot and feel guilty about it. The food you leave in the fridge for your kids when you are on a haul? That is love, packed in Tupperware.
Carlos Medina
Carlos is a high school football coach and married father of four in Denver whose family has been in New Mexico since before the Mayflower landed. He grew up on his grandmother's green chile — roasted over an open flame, the smell thick enough to stop traffic — and he puts it on everything. Eggs, burgers, pizza, ice cream once on a dare. His cooking is hearty, New Mexican, and built to feed a team. Literally.
Carmen Delgado-Ortiz
Carmen is a sixty-year-old retired hospital cafeteria manager, a grandmother of eight, and a Puerto Rican woman who survived Hurricane María in 2017 and rebuilt her life in Hartford, Connecticut, with nothing but her mother's sofrito recipe and the kind of determination that only comes from watching everything you own get washed away. She cooks arroz con pollo, pernil, and pasteles for every holiday, and her kitchen is always open because in Carmen's world, nobody eats alone.
Craig Hensley
Craig is a retired coal miner from Harlan County, Kentucky — a man who spent twenty years underground and seventeen hours trapped in a collapsed tunnel before he was twenty-four. He moved his family to Lexington when the mine closed, learned to cook his mama Betty's Appalachian recipes from memory because she never wrote them down, and now he's trying to get them on paper before they're lost. He says "reckon" and "fixing to" and means both. His bourbon-glazed ribs are, according to his wife Connie, "acceptable" — which is the highest praise she gives.
DeShawn Carter
DeShawn is a thirty-six-year-old single dad, auto plant worker, and a man who didn't learn to cook until his wife left and his five-year-old asked, "Daddy, can you cook something?" He called his mama, who came over with two bags of groceries and spent six months teaching him the basics. Now he's the dad at the cookout who brings the ribs, the guy at the plant whose leftover gumbo starts fights, and living proof that it's never too late to learn.
Diane Holloway
Diane is a forty-six-year-old insurance adjuster in Des Moines who grew up on a four-hundred-acre farm that her family had worked since 1908. When commodity prices crashed and the bank came calling, the Webers lost the farm — four generations of heritage sold at auction. Diane left with her mother's casserole recipes and a cast iron skillet and rebuilt her life in the city. She cooks Midwest comfort food because it tastes like home, even when home doesn't exist anymore.
Dorothy Henderson
Dot Henderson is a seventy-one-year-old grandmother, a retired school lunch lady, and the undisputed queen of Lowcountry cooking in her corner of Savannah, Georgia. She spent thirty-five years feeding schoolchildren — sneaking extra portions to the ones who looked hungry — and now she feeds her seven grandchildren every Sunday without exception. She cooks with lard, seasons by feel, and ends every recipe the same way her mama did: "Now go on and feed somebody."
Earl Johnson
Earl "Big E" Johnson is a sixty-seven-year-old retired postal carrier, a forty-two-year husband, and a Memphis BBQ legend who learned to smoke pork shoulder at his Uncle Clyde's stand when he was eleven years old. He lost his daughter Denise to sickle cell disease at twenty-three, and he honors her every year by smoking her favorite meal on her birthday and setting a plate at the table. His dry rub uses sixteen spices he keeps in a mayonnaise jar. He will not share the recipe. Not even with Rosetta.
Eleni Papadopoulos
Eleni is a fifty-three-year-old Greek-American real estate agent in Tampa who rebuilt her life after her husband's business collapsed and took everything with it — the house, the savings, the marriage. She went back to her roots, cooking the Mediterranean food her Yiayia taught her in Tarpon Springs, and discovered that olive oil and stubbornness can get you through almost anything. Her spanakopita could stop traffic. Her comeback story could inspire a movie.
Grace Santos
Grace is a thirty-seven-year-old ER nurse in Anchorage, Alaska — Filipino-American, single, and the person her entire community calls when they need a hundred lumpia for a party or a shoulder to cry on after a hard shift. She cooks to cope with the things she sees in the emergency room, feeding her neighbors and her church and anyone who looks like they need a plate. Her adobo could bring peace to a warring nation. Her schedule could kill a lesser person.
Heather Dawson
Heather is a forty-two-year-old vet tech, divorced single mom, and cancer survivor who grew up on a cattle ranch in southern Idaho. She beat Stage II breast cancer at thirty-two, lost her marriage six months later, and rebuilt her life around her two kids, her three-legged pit bull, and her mother's cinnamon roll recipe. She cooks ranch food on a vet tech's budget and doesn't sugarcoat anything — except the cinnamon rolls.
Jake Kowalski
Jake is a twenty-nine-year-old brewery worker, newlywed, and proud Polish-American from Milwaukee's Bay View neighborhood. He didn't start cooking until his grandmother Babcia Helen passed away and left behind a stack of grease-stained recipe cards. Now he makes pierogi from scratch, smokes meats on a balcony smoker his landlord pretends not to notice, and writes for guys who want to cook good food but don't know a roux from a rub.
Jen Nakamura
Jen is a forty-year-old yoga instructor and divorced mom in Portland who traded panic attacks for plants and never looked back. She's Japanese-American on her father's side — third-generation, with a family history that includes wartime internment and generational silence — and white on her mother's. Her cooking is plant-forward, intuitive, and deeply influenced by both her Japanese grandmother's techniques and the Pacific Northwest farmers market she visits every Saturday rain or shine. Which in Portland means mostly rain.
Jesse Whitehawk
Jesse is a thirty-nine-year-old welder, a Cherokee Nation citizen, and a married dad of three in Tulsa who cooks over open fire because that's how his grandpa Charlie did it and his grandpa's grandpa did it before him. His food draws from Cherokee tradition, Mexican heritage from his mother's side, and Oklahoma BBQ culture. He forages wild onions every spring and makes grape dumplings in the fall, and he considers both acts of cultural survival.
Kate Donovan
Kate is a thirty-five-year-old nurse practitioner in Boston and a widowed mother of two whose husband Sean died of brain cancer at thirty-three. She makes Irish soda bread and beef stew and shepherd's pie because the recipes are all she has left of a man who was supposed to grow old with her. She writes about cooking through grief and finding out you can still feed your children on the worst day of your life.
Kaylee Turner
Kaylee is twenty-five, married with three kids under six, and the youngest mom on the RecipeSpinoff team. She got her GED at twenty, married at nineteen, and feeds her family on whatever she can find at Dollar General and the Tulsa grocery outlet. She survived a tornado that took the roof off her apartment and discovered that you can make surprisingly good dinners with canned goods and determination. Don't underestimate her. She doesn't underestimate herself.
Linda Johansson
Linda is a sixty-three-year-old retired nurse from Duluth, Minnesota, living alone in the house where she raised her children and said goodbye to her husband. She lost Paul to ALS in 2020 after two years of watching the kindest man she'd ever known lose everything but his dignity. She cooks Scandinavian comfort food and Minnesota hotdish and the pot roast Paul loved, and she sets two places at the table out of habit because it makes her feel less alone. Every recipe she writes is a person she's loved.
Loretta Simms
Loretta is a fifty-six-year-old pastor's wife in Birmingham, Alabama, who has been feeding her church and her community for thirty-four years. She lost her teenage son Jeremiah in a car accident, and she cooked through the grief because that is what Loretta does — she feeds people. Every funeral, every homecoming, every Wednesday night supper. If you are hurting, Loretta will show up at your door with a casserole and she will not leave until you eat.
Marcus Rivera
Marcus is a Phoenix firefighter, a husband, a dad of two, and the kind of guy who'd hand you a plate of brisket before he'd shake your hand. He grew up watching his father Roberto grill carne asada every Sunday in the backyard, and that tradition runs through everything he cooks. He's won a couple of local BBQ competitions, built an outdoor kitchen his wife calls "the altar," and feeds his fire crew on every shift. For Marcus, cooking isn't a hobby — it's how he shows up for the people he loves.
Maria Elena Gutierrez
Maria Elena was born in Ciudad Juárez, crossed the border at twenty with nothing but her mother's recipes in her head, and built a life in El Paso one tortilla at a time. She owns Panadería Rosa, a tiny bakery named after the mother who taught her that cooking is prayer and waste is sin. She has five children, a husband who chose the family over the beer, and a stack of handwritten recipes that she guards like sacred text — because they are.
Michelle Larson
Michelle is a forty-four-year-old mom of six in Provo, Utah, a former accountant who traded spreadsheets for freezer meal prep and never looked back. She is LDS, organized to a fault, and can fill a chest freezer with sixty labeled meals in a single Sunday afternoon. She lost her second baby to SIDS and carries that grief in everything she does — including the way she feeds her family, which she does with a precision and devotion that borders on sacred.
Naomi Blackwood
Naomi is a retired librarian from Charleston who spent thirty-one years putting books in people's hands and now spends her days putting her mother's Lowcountry recipes on paper before they're lost. She survived her husband's affair, her father's sudden death, and the long goodbye of her mother's final years. She cooks she-crab soup in a bowl that Carolyn brought from Beaufort, and in every spoonful you can taste the marsh and the memory and the grace of a woman who chose to stay and rebuild.
Priya Krishnamurthy
Priya is a pharmacist, wife, and mom of two in Edison, New Jersey — the town she grew up in, surrounded by the sights and smells of her mother's South Indian kitchen. These days, she splits her time between the hospital pharmacy, school pickups, and her own kitchen, where she cooks nearly every night. Her style is a blend of the Tamil recipes her mother taught her and the American comfort food her kids actually want to eat. She writes about the beautiful mess of balancing two cultures on one plate — and she wants you to know that ordering pizza is also an act of love.
Rachel Abernathy
Rachel is a twenty-eight-year-old Marine wife and mom of two who has moved five times in six years and learned to cook a Thanksgiving dinner with half her cookware still in boxes. She married young, survived postpartum depression, and feeds her family of four on a junior Marine's salary with a freezer full of pre-made meals and a crockpot that has never let her down. She writes for the military spouses who are cooking dinner alone in base housing and wondering if they're enough. You are.
Ruth Feldman
Ruth is a sixty-nine-year-old retired English teacher from Long Island, a Jewish grandmother of four, and the keeper of her family's Ashkenazi recipes — brisket, matzo ball soup, challah, and a noodle kugel that has caused actual arguments at family gatherings. She lost her husband Marvin to early-onset Alzheimer's and now cooks his favorite meals for the grandchildren, because the food remembers even when the people cannot.
Ryan Gallagher
Ryan is a thirty-one-year-old Army veteran and ranch hand in Billings, Montana, who cooks over open fire because microwaves feel dishonest and because the quiet of a campfire is the only therapy that works for him consistently. He hunts his own elk, catches his own trout, and makes a camp stew that tastes like the mountains smell. He doesn't talk much. But his food says everything.
Sarah Mitchell
Sarah is a single mom of three, a dental hygienist, and a Nashville girl through and through. She started cooking at eleven out of necessity — feeding her younger siblings while her mama worked double shifts — and never stopped. Her kitchen is tiny, her budget is tight, and her chicken and dumplings will make you want to cry. She writes for every mom who's ever felt like she's not doing enough. Spoiler: you are.
Savannah Clarke
Savannah is twenty-seven, engaged, and a daycare worker in Prattville, Alabama, who grew up in foster care and never had a kitchen to call her own until she was nineteen. She taught herself to cook from YouTube videos and church cookbooks, and now she makes fried chicken that would make your grandmother jealous. She writes for the girls who grew up like her — without a family recipe box, without a mama in the kitchen, without anyone to show them how. She's showing them now.
Stephanie Park
Stephanie is a software engineer in Seattle, a new mom, and a Korean-American adoptee who spent twenty-five years not knowing where she came from. She was adopted as an infant by a white family in Bellevue who loved her completely and never cooked Korean food. At twenty-eight, she found her birth mother in Busan — and then she found herself in a kitchen, crying over her first homemade kimchi jjigae, because some things your body remembers even when your mind doesn't.
Tamika Washington
Tamika is a school counselor, a remarried mom of four in a blended family, and the daughter of a woman whose fried chicken could make you forget every bad day you ever had. She lost her mother Brenda to cancer, survived a bad first marriage, and rebuilt her life around a dinner table where six people sit down together every night — no phones, no exceptions. Her cooking is Southern soul food with a health twist, because she learned the hard way that loving your family means keeping them alive, too.
Tommy Beaumont
Tommy is a Cajun electrician from Thibodaux, Louisiana, who lost his home to Hurricane Katrina four months after his wedding and rebuilt his life one roux at a time. He grew up on Bayou Lafourche, fishing with his father Joey at dawn and eating his mother's gumbo by dusk. His crawfish boils draw the whole neighborhood, his boudin is made from scratch, and he stirs his roux the way Joey taught him — dark as chocolate, forty-five minutes, no shortcuts. Laissez les bons temps rouler.
Walter Bergstrom
Walt is a seventy-three-year-old retired high school history teacher from Burlington, Vermont — a Vietnam veteran, a widower, and a grandfather of five who cooks New England comfort food in the same kitchen where his wife Margaret made bread every Saturday for forty years. He lost Margaret to a stroke in 2021, and now he bakes her bread himself, not because he's good at it but because the smell fills the house and for an hour she's still there.