Edie Dourleijn

Edith Dourleijn is a creative cook, recipe developer, cookbook author and cooking teacher. Welcome to my site!

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I was
… a picky eater that couldn’t cook.
By the way, this had nothing to do with being born and growing up in The Netherlands.

Now I am
… a food loving omnivore who teaches and writes about cooking, while loving and exploring wonderful California.

What happened in between?
Obviously I crossed the ocean.

But there is more. I learned myself to cook and enjoy food in all its shapes, colors and varieties.

I cooked my first meal when I was in college. In house full of girls no one really cooked their own meals, and I started doing so. Not hindered by any knowledge, I made a fresh meal almost every day. From scratch. My collection of torn-out recipes and cookbooks grew by the day. I even got some proper culinary schooling.

Soon I realized the enormous range of opportunities you have with fresh ingredients. Give me 3 fresh ingredients and by using different herbs, spices, condiments and cooking techniques I’ll eat another dish every day of the week. And yes, maybe I’ll prove it one day. Feel free to name any 3 ingredients! 😉

In January 2014 I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in California and focused on teaching Americans to cook. Currently I’m living close to San Diego, with my husband and 2 cats Juli & Japi.

 

… cooking coach. That would be the best way to describe my expertise and interests. I want to inspire home cooks with my journey from being a picky eater who couldn’t cook to the confident and creative cook I am now. As you can become one too!

The tools of my trade are writing recipes and cookbooks, teaching cooking classes and holding keynotes about creativity in the kitchen.

Let’s play in the kitchen!

recipe developer & cookbook author

After learning to cook using other people’s recipes and cookbooks, I started to develop my own. I have developed recipes for both commercial and non-profit parties. I wrote the cookbook First Aid Kitchen as a ghost writer for a tv-chef, was the culinary editor for other people’s cookbooks, and wrote recipes to say Sorry with. In addition, I work as a culinary proofreader for various cookbook projects.

Currently I am working on 2 (!) unique cookbook ideas, that I will need to bring out into the world. (Yes, this is a hint).

cooking coach & teacher

Most of my time I spend in the kitchen helping home cooks become a more confident and creative cook. We can cook together for a fun and inspirational cooking team building or have a cooking class party for family or friends celebrating milestones. Or book me for a private cooking or coaching session and tell me what you like to learn. Virtual or in person.

Check my company’s website creative cook co.

cooking speaker & evangelist

Being a creative cook, I love to talk about food, cooking and encouraging you to have fun in the kitchen. To inspire you, I am for hire for an inspirational and interactive keynote about cooking and creativity in the kitchen. We can add-in a live interactive cooking class or a 5-week creative cooking challenge for your audience, with fun and engaging cooking challenges to bring more creativity into their kitchens.

Learn more here.

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For more information about my professional life, you can check my profile on LinkedIn.

Soon, I will be starting with my unique, hop on hop off, Technique & Taste cooking course. In this ongoing series of virtual cooking classes, I will teach you all I know about cooking in a very unique way.

Every class, we will focus on 1 theme. That could be a cooking technique, an essential, an ingredient, or that could be a dish. You can sign up for 1 class only, or get a monthly subscription and join me in the kitchen every week.

Email me to stay in the loop: info @ creativecookco.com [without the spaces]

This site started as a food blog, edie eats, partially documenting my new life in California, partly describing all the fun I had teaching my cooking classes.

For now, the old blog posts are still online, but might be deleted later. Have a look at them.

What do we eat tonight?

For some, it’s the most difficult question when it comes to cooking. At my food blog edie eats I plan to tell you all about what inspires me and how that leads to new recipes and dishes. It can be the smell of apricots and the abundance of greens at the farmers markets, the curiosities you can find in ethnic supermarkets, the little vegetable garden I have in my backyard with some heirloom veggies. Exploring new ingredients, trying another cooking technique on my favorite veggies or just combine them with other ingredients and condiments than I’m used to, playing with food. That’s the fun of cooking for me.

Eat more veggies!

A plate full of vegetables is way more healthy for ourselves and our planet. Here at edie eats you can find a lot of recipes that make veggies the star player of your dish. Simply because I love to cook with fresh vibrant, colorful vegetables; they inspire me more to explore and play with then then meat or fish can do. I’m not a vegetarian, so I do add meat or fish to my dishes, but not much. I’m convinced a plate full of vegetables is way more healthy for ourselves and our planet.

About the recipes

At edie eats I only publish my own recipes. If they’re inspired on a recipe by someone else, I’ll tell. But usually, I only copy the idea and make the dish my way.
– All recipes are for two adults, unless otherwise stated.
– If a recipe is stated vegetarian, it means that there’s no meat or fish in it. It can contain cheeses or other dairy produce that strictly don’t have to be vegetarian. Please feel free to substitute these ingredients with those that you feel good about.
– Do you have questions about the recipes? Want to know how to change them? Please react below the specific post or contact me in another way.

Disclaimer
At this moment I don’t do reviews and sponsored articles, but go ahead, shoot me an email [blog [at] edithdourleijn . com] if you think you can convince me to do otherwise.