A love for food and life: A Life Delicious
DENVER — Growing up in Colorado, Naomi Cook learned her way around the kitchen from an early age. Cook's mother wanted help at mealtime, so she enlisted her triplet daughters. It was around age 11 that Cook and her sisters started taking turns making a meal once a week.
Cook admits she didn't appreciate what she was learning at the time. "I just kind of thought it was a chore. But now as an adult it's really helpful. You know I've learned some of the basics back then that I can obviously apply in my every day cooking," she said.
That chore of cooking turned into a love for food that kicked in after college.
Cook said she was working in Denver and started watching the Food Network. During that time she said, "I discovered not only do I love food, but I love creating food."
And it was that love that led her to food blogging.
"In the fall of 2017, I officially launched my food blog to share my love of food. However, it wasn’t until the summer of 2019, when experimenting with an 'elimination diet', that I discovered that I shouldn’t eat dairy. And let me tell you what, I felt like a whole new person. That experience triggered something within me. After tons of research I decided, from that moment on, to be very mindful of the ingredients and food I eat," Cook explained.
"A Life Delicious" was born two years later in 2019, a name chosen by Cook's husband and inspired by her passion for food and life. She knows there are a lot of food blogs out there, but said hers is different.
"My food blog, I think, stands out from the rest because … my style … nobody can mimic my style. Nobody can mimic me and who I am and everybody regardless of the type of blogger that they are brings something different to the table regardless of whether it's their style of cooking or their personality," said Cook.
Cook's recipe for success is creating meals and dishes for everyone.
"The way I write my recipes caters to everybody in the family. Whether it's your husband who doesn't want to eat dairy free or your child that needs to, I do provide options where you can use certain dairy-free products or not. If there's a meal that I want to create with a nice, velvety pasta sauce and I know can't have dairy I work it to where I find products to where you can use," Cook said.
Her hope and goal is for "A Life Delicious" to help others find a better way of cooking.
"You can still enjoy delicious baked goods, delicious desserts, and family-cooked meals that are better for you," explained Cook. "There are better ingredients out there for you. Yes, some may be expensive, but if you take the time to research, and then start to incorporate those better ingredients for you, you will start to cook better and more importantly you will start to feel better."
You can find Naomi's Cook recipes on the Rocky Mountain PBS food page below.