A Couple Cooks was born in 2010. My husband Alex and I had gotten married a few years earlier, and wanted to learn how to cook something for dinner guests at our new home. We started trying recipes, and ended up falling in love with cooking. A bit later, we read the book Food Matters by Mark Bittman, which challenged us to stop eating processed foods and start focusing on vegetables instead of meat. We loved the way we felt, and this started a new passion for personal health and the environmental effects of our food choices.

All of these passions, along with our shared passion for photography, led to a lot of meals and food photos. We had a personal blog at the time where we posted pictures of the food we were creating, and after about a year of that we decided to separate it into a dedicated food blog. We had no idea where A Couple Cooks would go, and it’s been an amazing ride learning about recipe development and food photography, and meeting inspiring artists and activists from around the world

There are so many diets out there, which can be incredibly confusing! Alex and I have done a lot of reading and have come up with what seems to be common in most diets: healthy, whole foods, with a focus on plants. And even better? Cooking these foods at home! Once you start incorporating them into your diet, you’ll come to appreciate how delicious eating whole foods can be.

We eat a “Mediterranean-style” diet – olive oil, lots of vegetables and whole grains, and minimal sweets and meats. We aim for 90% vegetarian meals, and 90% healthy whole foods, since we find a relaxed approach to eating makes it doable. “Everything in moderation” is a common theme for us.

On a busy weeknight, we don’t always have time to cook a new recipe. If not, we’ll have a big salad, quesadilla, or a quick stir fry — if we don’t have any leftovers in the refrigerator! Leftovers are our favorite; we try to plan to have enough from our weekend cooking sessions that we can eat during the week.