Cooking is More Fun with Friends | Client Spotlight

I have two mom clients who I meet with about every other week, and while I look forward to seeing all my clients, I get especially excited to see these two. I think the friend dynamic has a lot to do with it – it’s just more fun cooking with friends. If folks made cooking dates, just like they made work-out dates, people probably would end up cooking a lot more. If you knew your friend (and his / her family) was counting on your cooking company for their week’s worth of meals, you’d get yourself to the kitchen. No one likes to let their friends down after all.

The way it works is I send them our lesson plan a few days before we meet. They split the grocery list responsibilities – one goes to Trader Joe’s for produce and pantry staples; the other to Whole Foods for proteins. Then we all get together on Monday mornings to cook a few days worth of meals. They get to catch up on each other’s lives, learn something together, and split the work of cooking. In my mind these ladies are geniuses – they’ve made cooking into something social and fun.

I know that this is a model that can be replicated everywhere. We all have friends and / or family members that we wish we could spend more time with. Send them a couple of recipes that you’ve been meaning to try that you think they’ll love too. Pick a kitchen. Make a date. Invest in some new storage containers for all that food you’ll be bringing home. Cook together. Gossip. Share a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. Invite your kids to share in the work. But most importantly, have fun and make something tasty.

In our latest lesson, the ladies wanted to do shrimp and sausage jambalaya (a favorite in both households). We turned it into a lesson on how to make one-post rice dishes