What would you put in a cookbook? While many grew up with the “Better Homes and Gardens”, more and more, these days, appear to have grown up without a basic home cooking experience or even the most basic cooking skills. Dining out, ordering in, fast food, fast casual, online ordering and delivery have made it more and more convenient not to bother with cooking, or even learning to cook.
Not so in the Allen household! Growing up, Lauren and Liz were exposed to a solid tradition of homemade cooking with influences including Thai, Indian, and German food. As Lauren puts it: “Our mother ingrained in us that everything tastes better from scratch!” Having experienced the love of good food shared with family and friends, it is no surprise that they would want to share this with the rest of us.
Starting with a small website to share recipes between friends and family, her “Tastes Better From Scratch” website and social presence have grown to the point where her YouTube channel alone is followed by thousands of subscribers, and her recipes are viewed by close to 10 million readers each month. The recipes are easy, quick, and simple to make. The food is accessible and uncomplicated. The cookbook is well organized and easy to follow.
Her dream was to create recipes for every skill level and any level of cook. From chocolate chip cookies to fancy dinner with guests, her cookbook is the result of years of experimenting, sharing recipes, and getting feedback from her community. Her mission: to bring joy back to cooking and give you confidence in the kitchen.
According to Lauren, the pendulum is shifting back to quality time in the kitchen. After suffering a lot of mediocre food, people are back to questioning what’s in their food and how it was made. Are the ingredients fresh? Are we using premade kits? Her objective is to debunk cooking from scratch and to make it available to everyone. Are you out of cake mix? If you have flour, eggs, sugar, buttermilk, and a few other ingredients, you are good to go.
So, what would you put in a cookbook? For Lauren, it is all the recipes her family loved … and love. Every one of them lovingly gathered over the years, tested, updated, time and time again – sometimes to the despair of her family. And, with her background in journalism, researched and documented for everyone to enjoy. This is her passion. She’s hoping it will become yours as well.
Don’t take our word for it! Lauren graciously shared some of her recipes with us. You’ll find them in our pages. Go try them and let us know. Better yet, have a look at Lauren’s website and, you know, like, comment, or subscribe!
