Welcome to Piper Cooks
Hi. I'm Jacqueline Piper and I write this website. I can usually be found in the kitchen or swaying in my hammock at my cabin. I'm lucky to have a wonderfully supportive husband, 3 amazing (grown) kids, and 2 perfect little grand-babies.
I love to cook, travel, take photos, and watch hockey and football. Fresh ingredients, new ethnic grocery stores, and mom & pop restaurants make my heart go pitter-patter. We love supporting local restaurants and businesses in my hometown of Winnipeg (right in the middle of Canada) and I take pride in being a Winnipeg food blogger.
I dream up new recipes. I eat boujee avocado toast. I drink red wine and bourbon on ice. I have the occasional cigar. If you ask my family, I might have too many cookbooks. And puppy never leaves my side.
I used to be terrible in the kitchen
Learning new things is my favorite. Give me a book, a video, or a website on something new and I'm here for it.
It's a good thing I love learning new things because about 7 years ago my doctor and I suspected I had Celiac Disease. In 2015 I finally saw a specialist and found out I didn't - for which I was so grateful.
But the whole process really opened my eyes to food and made me think about what I was eating - and how it was prepared. The days of browsing the frozen food aisles were gone once my doctor advised me to stay gluten-free until I could see a specialist.
It was confusing and weird. Mostly because I didn't know how to cook. At the time, we were a young family with three little kids and I mostly “cooked” out of cans and boxes.
My husband once took one of my "homemade" lunches to work where his co-workers immediately declared it the “worst lunch they'd ever seen”. I'll never forget what it was: an empty margarine container full of kraft dinner I had made the night before and smushed in there along with a bologna sandwich on plain white bread with a meager amount of margarine and ONE. SLICE. OF. BOLOGNA.
I could almost cry thinking about it now, which makes me want to laugh. We all start somewhere. And I was starting from the very lowest of cooking skills.
I had to learn to cook.
All of a sudden I had to learn about ingredients, shopping, baking, preparation, cooking, nutrition. I couldn't eat what was on the shelves at the store. It was difficult to go out and eat in restaurants. Store-bought loaves of gluten-free bread were like bricks back then. I had to help myself.
I'm so glad I went through that though. I never thought I'd love cooking and baking and creating recipes, but I do! So much!
If I can learn, you can too!
And if I can learn, you can too! We can all move on from sad bologna sandwiches. Trust me. And it doesn't have to be difficult or expensive. I try to use simple, fresh ingredients and make pretty much everything from scratch.
My favorite saying is “We can make it!”
About my recipes
I've created and photographed the recipes you'll find here. I'm still learning, but it's so much fun learning, right? That's probably why you're here.
I think food tastes so much better when it's homemade. And it's usually healthier too, which is important to me.
I share my recipes so that you too can make healthy homemade food for yourself, your family, and your friends. And I totally believe it's okay to have treats too. Everything in moderation.
My recipes:
- are mostly healthy and use ingredients you can find in your local grocery store. Sometimes we'll use an ingredient from a local ethnic store if we can find it, as in Pad Thai or Thai Curry Soup. Feel free to skip to the next recipe if you want to on those occasions. I love food from around the world.
- include one-pot dinners, Instant Pot dinners, delicious side dishes, loaded salads. I specialize in making things from scratch so you'll find a wide variety of homemade Condiments, Sauce, and Dips as well as a special section on Takeout at Home recipes.
- also include several recipes and step by step directions on how to make homemade bread and buns.
- start with breakfast. Try the most popular recipe on my website for Cinnamon Roll Homemade Oats. You'll also find my boujee Avocado Toast, another one of the most popular recipes here.
- as seen in -
Reader's Digest, Half Your Plate Canada, NOOM and Yogi Approved
Connect with me
I hope you enjoy reading this website and trying these recipes. Please snap a photo and share it with me on Instagram @pipercooksblog and hashtag it #pipercooksblog – I'd love to see! Pin my recipes to your Pinterest boards to keep them to make later. Leaving a comment and a star rating on a recipe helps me so much also.
Contact me in the comments of a recipe or by email to ask about a specific recipe.
Check out my Recipe Index to see my growing archive of recipes and subscribe to get an email when I post a new recipe.
I've also made two free eBooks for you. The first book is Pantry Meals: 28 Easy Recipes. The second book is a DIY Guide to Homemade Soup. Download them below!
Thank you for visiting with me and enjoy your day!
DIY Guide To Home Soup Pantry Meals: 28 Easy Recipes
