My Name is… Lauren Cooper, The Cute Cook

The reason you are reading about me is… Because I believe that cooking can be fast, easy, and fun. I’m here to show you how to do it and still KEEP IT CUTE.

Right now I’m working on… Taking over the country one kitchen at a time. ☺ My goal is to make cooking at home and dining with loved ones accessible to those who have been misled to thinking that cooking is some great mystic art. Many people assume that food can’t be both good for you and taste good. Lies and deceit!

I eat WELL and love the foods I put into my body. How can I love myself if I’m willing to disrespect my insides by filling them up with pollutants.

But if I wasn’t, I’d be… In my junior high school classroom molding America’s future through the Theatre Arts Program I created my curriculum for. I love working with kids. Love seeing their faces light up when they understand something they’ve been grappling with. Love when they come back after graduation to volunteer on the shows we produce or to talk to the younger kids about the choices they should make. They are such fragile little sponges. It’s super important that the adults in their lives pay attention to what we allow them to absorb.

One thing I do every day is…

• Read about food.
• Dream about food.
• Think about food.
• Write about food.
• Cook food.

It’s a wonder I’m not a metric ton because of my food obsession. I happen to like a lot of healthy foods so I manage to strike some sort of balance between leaner fare and comfort foods or else I wouldn’t be able to KEEP IT CUTE!!

I can’t stand when people… Oh boy…this list is long. These are the first ones that come to mind….

1. Read over my shoulder. (It really does drive me CRAZY)
2. Abuse or endanger children, the infirmed, or the elderly.
3. Talk down to me or underestimate my intelligence.
4. Don’t know how to behave at the dinner table. (Napkins in the lap, no hats, no gesturing with flatware…ugh these are basics that you’d be surprised don’t get observed as often as they should. If I had a quarter for every date I’d been on where I had to tell him to put his napkin in his lap…well, I’d certainly have enough to bury my parent who I’m sure are dying from shame that I’d dine with such unsavory types. Lol)
5. Are lazy or willfully ignorant as if either are traits to be proud of or celebrated.

But I love it when people… Are good and kind and living to be happy and healthy. It’s so easy for people to do the right thing or the kind thing or what would make them happiest, but so often they make life more of a challenge by doing everything but what’s right. You only get one life, why not live every moment as though it were your last?

If you happen to run into me in the street… It’s probably because I’m on my crackberry and typing while walking. Or typing, talking, eating and walking. Lol I LIVE on my phone. I don’t have any family in the tri-state area where I live and my friends are all scattered to the wind living their busy grown up lives. I use, excuse me ABuse my phone to stay in touch with all of them, read food/foodie articles, tweet the random thoughts that float through my head and scribble down story or recipe ideas that come to mind. Oh yeah, I also love to read menus and people watch so you’ll probably catch me doing all three at once.

The Best piece of advice I ever received was… Live in the moment and live that moment to the fullest. You never know if it could be your last. The only thing you can control is yourself and your own happiness….Once you accept that, you’ll be surprised at how free you will feel.

If I had to coin it, my message would be… KEEP IT CUTE. This message can be applied to all areas of life and still hold true.

My future plans and projects include… Becoming a household name. I hate saying I wanna be “the Black_______” but unfortunately, that is how people see and describe things. That said, I want to be the Black Rachel Ray. There is such a serious under representation of cooks of color in the mainstream/public eye. Who do we have, the Neely’s and Marcus Samuelson? Two polar opposite ends of a food spectrum that often confuses those they should appeal to. One is the intangibly precious world of haute cuisine and the other is all that so many know too well; comfort foods that result in uncomfortable medical conditions.

Big Ups to… My parents for teaching us how to cook and the importance of understanding not just the ingredients of a recipe that you can buy in a store but that one of the most important things you can put into food is love, especially when cooking for those you care for.

My Brothers for always being willing to talk food with me no matter what time of day or how odd the combos may sound.

My friends for always being willing and sated guinea pigs with all of the experiments, errrm, I mean recipes I conjure up. An extra special Big Up to my manager & BFF Candice (@candice202) who is actually responsible for coming up with the concept and title for our show. I also wanna shout her out for always keeping me on task and sending me a bazillion recipe contests to enter. One day, one of them will be our “ticket out the hood!” Lol

Big Ups to my uuuuh-maaay-zing producer/editor Mr. Brian Cooper (@supertrooper01.) Who ever could’ve thunk what a dynamic team 2 Coopers could make? We’ve been friends for over 10years. I told him what I wanted to do with The Cute Cook, but was disillusioned because we didn’t have the camera skills/ability to bring what Candice & I wanted to do to fruition. Brian swept in and saved the day. He jumped on board with all of his Super Cooper skills and is responsible for all the videos we’ve brought you and plan on bringing you. I’m not a diva, but I can be an unintentional handful on set. He somehow manages to wrangle all my frenetic energy and produce sequential and entertaining videos.

Big Ups to my graphic designer J.Streete (@jstreete.) This is a young kid I met in a coffee house in atl when he was still in undergrad at Morehouse. As a complete stranger, I started bossing him around and haven’t stopped yet. I don’t speak design well, but somehow he always manages to create exactly what I’m looking for. He is an awesome addition to the fam and Team Cute Cook.

Find Lauren online at The Cute Cook