MEET US

Ninecooks, a resource for bringing people together in the kitchen, grew out of the shared cooking experience of food writer Lydia Walshin and a group of eight friends in rural northwest Rhode Island.

Who's Lydia? She's been a professional food writer since 1993; author of South End Cooks: Recipes from a Boston Neighborhood; formerly a contributing editor and award-winning food columnist for Rhode Island Monthly magazine, and a food blogger; former advisory board member for Share Our Strength's Operation Frontline program in Boston; founder of Drop In and Decorate^SM cookies for donation; and co-founder of Will Paint for Food.

She learned to cook by watching her grandmother in the kitchen – and Julia Child on television – and she discovered early on that the real joy of cooking came from cooking with friends and family, improvising together, laughing together, and sharing food traditions and memories.

So, in 2002, with a large-enough kitchen, an organized and curious mind, and a love of the wonderful, magical, sometimes hilarious things that happen when people cook together, she began hosting cooking sessions for her friends, once a month or so.

Today, five years later, the original nine cooks, and many others, are still cooking in her log house kitchen.