Where Food is Art, and Art is Food for the Eyes
I ended up raiding my kitchen when I first discovered They Draw and Cook... after I finally tore myself away from the eye candy galore at the website, that is.
This is a food blog with a difference. You won't find beautifully styled photos and award-winning chefs showing off their chops. What you'll get is an artful feast for the eyes: fun, colorful and visual recipes illustrated with sometimes a generous pinch of cuteness, other times a serving of slick design and oftentimes a double dose of whimsy. Dig in and you may discover more than just cooking tips.
Take Alyssa DeGeorge's recipe. The Kent State University student can tell you all about catching a lobster and cooking it as she's spent summers doing just that with her father. "A day of lobstering is a relaxing, unique adventure I wanted to share through my work," she told me. So for a class project for They Draw and Cook, she came up with an illustration peppered with instructions on how to catch a lobster and even how to identify its gender.
They Draw and Cook was the brainchild of sister-and-brother design team Salli Swindell and Nate Padavick. During a family vacation, while Padavick was trying to recreate a favorite dish - fettucine with figs in a balsamic butter sauce - Swindell was painting the figs with her watercolors. Thus was born the idea of illustrating food.
The duo tried to get recipes from artist friends for a self-published book but when that didn't work out, they started the blog in February 2010. And did they cook up a winning recipe! Today, They Draw and Cook is a resource for some 1,300 illustrated recipes by 750 contributors who include professional illustrators and practising artists, as well as people who are just "passionate doodlers and drawers", as the site states.
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