Fresh ingredients. Real cooking. Eating well.

You deserve to eat well. Feeding yourself and your people real food doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming.

Working in professional kitchens has taught me a thing or two about stream-lining the process and making it easier.

I want to share some of that knowledge with you, to make YOUR life easier, because we all have to eat and it may as well be GOOD FOOD.

Hi! I’m Cheryl

I am the recipe writer, food & beverage tester, photographer and dishwasher at Pook’s Pantry.

My wife and I currently live in Florida. Our dog Sugar was the head taste tester for the dog treat recipes on the blog and the best girl ever. She was a little dog with a huge personality.

I attended culinary school in New York and am a classically-trained Chef who worked in fine dining and high-end catering for over 13 years in New York City before leaving Brooklyn to head south.

I started Pook’s Pantry back in 2011 as a way to share recipes and some of the skills and knowledge I learned from being in professional kitchens.

It gave me a place to share ideas and to be creative. A place to share food that was accessible to everyone.

The spark that (many years later) turned into this blog was teaching my younger brother how to cook for himself when we were fresh out of college. He called me and asked how to cook salmon.

Then, we made roast chicken. And, it grew from there. Before I knew it, my brother had become a cook!

There is nothing that feeds my soul more (pun fully intended!) than teaching people how to feed themselves well! (And convincing a random woman in Target to put the boxed cake mix back on the shelf and bake a cake from scratch for the very first time in her life… but that’s a story for another day)

Watching someone discover a new ingredient or learn a new technique and seeing the joy they feel is what makes my heart happy.

I want that feeling for you too! Because we all deserve GOOD FOOD made with fresh ingredients.

Who is Pook?

So many people have asked me over the years who or what is a Pook? It’s the nickname my Mom gave me when I was a baby.

The other question I get a lot is how do you pronounce it? It has a long “u” sound like “food”. It does not rhyme with look.

The name Pook’s Pantry came about because I truly believe that if you keep a fairly well-stocked pantry, you can create some pretty amazing meals at any given time, and also, I rather like alliteration.

Having the basics on hand and a bit of know-how, means you can rule your kitchen like a boss.

Let’s Chat!

I love hearing from you! Questions, comments, or just wanna say “hi”?

Shoot me at email at Cheryl (at) pookspantry.com.

The quickest (and easiest) way to get an answer about a recipe is to leave a comment on the post.