Vintage Kitchen Recipes is a collaboration between 2 friends, Laura and Sallie, who met in elementary school band, where they both played alto saxophone. Through the following 20+ years of friendship, having endured horrible band directors, bad boyfriends, home economics class, a shared dorm room in college and many other challenges together, they have discovered many common interests: the love of a well-written nonfiction book, a healthy sense of pessimism, an appreciation for a tasty craft beer, and a passion for good food made in our own kitchens.
About Sallie
I am a thirty-something home cook who loves nothing more than to be in the kitchen, preparing an elaborate feast for friends and family. My culinary interests are all over the map; I take equal pleasure in a steaming hot bowl of tom kha gai, spicy tortilla soup with a dollop of sour cream, or a good old fashioned bowl of chicken and dumplings. The idea for VKR came to me because of a wealth of old recipes I received from my Grandma Marguerite, who was a wonderful cook and probably the biggest inspiration for my own kitchen adventures. Some sounded wonderful as is, but many had odd ingredients and archaic cooking methods. Even some of the most outdated recipes nonetheless contained a flirtation with yumminess, just waiting to be discovered and modernized. When I found out my husband would be stationed in Kansas for only one year, I knew (A) there wouldn't really be enough time for me to get a good job, and (B) I would therefore need a project to keep me from going insane. I then set out to collect other old-fashioned recipes from friends and family, old cookbooks, newspaper clippings and anywhere else I could find them, and Vintage Kitchen was born.
Besides being a food lover, I am also an all-around nerd with an education in physics, engineering, and biotechnology, the proud wife of an Army officer, mother to the sweetest black lab mutt and the cutest little girl on the planet, and a hiker and kayaker who is madly in love with nature. Within the past 7 years I have lived in Missouri, Tennessee, New York, Kansas, Kentucky, and back to Kansas, and despite my wanderings, my best friends remain those lifelong buddies whom I met in the Hazelwood School District in Florissant, Missouri some 2 decades ago. Wherever I go, cooking is a source of comfort and creativity for me. Thanks for visiting!
About Laura
I love to eat. And the easiest way to ensure that I get a good meal is to cook it myself. I didn't start really cooking until we moved to Chicago and I filled my days of unemployment watching cooking shows on PBS. We were too poor for cable and definitely too poor to go out to eat much, so cooking it was.
I love to improvise and pull a great meal out of thin air. Swapping out ingredients and altering recipes comes naturally to me, because I don't really like vegetables but I don't want to get scurvy so I have to get creative about hiding them and making them tasty. And everything needs more garlic.
I live on the NW side of Chicago with my husband and two redonk cats in a hundred year old house that's doing its best to fall apart. Cooking a big meal on Sunday is often my "break" from working on the house.
