You have to start at the beginning. Cookbook 411.

Cookbook 411 was not really my idea. That honor goes to my brilliant husband, as a result of me complaining about describing my feeble attempts to follow a recipe for once. He wisely suggested that it would be great if there was a place on the web that you could go and look up, by cookbook, by recipe, what other people did. Cookbook authors could even use the feedback to help improve future editions. We thought it would be a great idea to have a moderated forum to do this, and a week later, Cookbook 411 existed… part blog/part forum.

Well, after many months I learned a valuable lesson. While my blog has had some successes (thanks readers!), the forum was just a collection bin for spammers and I ended up spending far too much time cleaning up what no one (myself included!) was using. So, with that, Cookbook 411 became just another food blog, still clinging to the old name. Eventually, that drove me nuts because the site wasn’t just about cookbooks. It was all about food, and cooking and restaurants and eating. So, then, I changed the name to something simple: Cook & Eat was born. Hopefully you will enjoy it!

What you should know about me:

Most of my recipes are based on something I’ve seen, but I almost always mess things up along the way resulting in something entirely new. The great thing about this blog is that I get to remember what changes I made. Not that I could follow the recipe later…

I don’t like cookbooks without photos. I will use them, but only begrudgingly. I need the visual to want to make the dish.

I love to take photos of what I make. Probably even more than eating what I make. Plus, it’s fewer calories.

I am terrible at spelling. I abuse apostrophes and other forms of punctuation. I don’t have an editor on this site, so feel free to send me mail if you see typos or other errors that bug you.

This blog is just food-related stuff. I also run a food photography & styling blog too, where I share my thoughts and occasional how-tos on food photography and food styling. My personal blog is mainly travel stuff and the occasional rant or rave.

I won’t recommend something on this site that I don’t like. I do, however, accept products and book for review from publishers and if I think it is something that will appeal to my readers, or something that I am super-gung ho about, I may post about it on my blog. I will always give an honest, straight-forward review. If I like it, I’ll say so. If I don’t, I’ll say that too… even if I got the product at no charge.

I’m trying out a new service called Blogio that helps me get relevant PR releases. For looking at the press releases, I may get some compensation. It’s up to me whether I post about the things I read there or not… and that doesn’t impact my compensation one way or another, which is pretty cool. If I do find something there that I like, and post about it, I’ll be sure to make that clear in the post. Don’t worry though… I do not, nor will I ever, do paid-to-post. If you are curious about Blogio, I plan on posting about my experience on Food Blog S’cool in a month or so (May 2008 timeframe).

I often will link to Amazon or Cooking.com with products that I like or review. I am an Amazon and Cooking.com affiliate, and by following the links you will be supporting this blog. I do get a small % of the purchase. And when I say small, I mean really small. Not nearly as much as it takes to run the blog… but every little helps! So, thanks to everyone for your support!

The links in Favs & Finds are just little things… recipes, props, cookbooks, whatever, that I find and think my readers might be interested in. They may be affiliate links, but more often than not, aren’t.

I do run some ads on the site for the same reason. Cook & Eat is part of Martha’s Circle because for the most part, the ads look pretty nice. If you’d like to advertise on Cook & Eat or one of my other blogs, let me know! In case your are curious, total ad revenue over the past few months for all my blogs combine is about $300… enough to help cover a few of the costs of servers, software and supplies, but only a small percentage. You don’t get into blogging for the money!

All content, including photographs except those in Favs & Finds, are created by me, and therefore are copyrighted with All Rights Reserved, unless otherwise noted. Ask first before republishing or distributing!

If you are looking for a food photographer, give me a buzz. You can find my portfolio on laraferroni.com

I’m glad you are here! Feel free to leave me comments. I love comments!