This marks another addition to the regular feature here at little Indiana: Indiana Blogs! If you are an Indiana Blogger, please use the contact form and send me an email. You may be featured right here on little Indiana.

Indiana Blogs: A Couple Cooks

Indiana Blogs: A Couple Cooks


A Couple Cooks is an Indiana blog that is a product of Alex and Sonja, a husband and wife team, who spend their days working at the same small technical firm.

Together, they found another winning combination: in the kitchen. They discovered a new creative outlet in cooking and photography.

For the most part, this Indianapolis couple turns to natural, whole food, preparing it a simple, easy style that anyone can master with such clearly defined recipes.

Indiana Blogs: A Couple Cooks

Why did you start A Couple Cooks? 
After we got married, we started becoming interested in cooking since we needed something to feed dinner guests. As our interest grew, we noticed that we kept posting about food on the personal blog we had at the time.

At the same time, we began learning about the environmental and health impact of our eating choices, and made some changes in our diet to cut out processed food and opt for natural and seasonal ingredients.

We decided to start a food-related blog in August 2010 to document what had become a passion for the two of us.

What about that name? Why A Couple Cooks?
We played with a bunch of names starting out, but liked A Couple Cooks because of the word play, and because it highlighted our cooking journey together (almost always, we are in the kitchen together).

What are three of your most favorite posts?
Good question! Here are a few we like, though it’s hard to choose:

  • Simple Vegetable Paella Paella, a traditional Spanish rice dish, is one of our favorite meals to make when we have special guests. (Sonja came to love the dish when she studied abroad in Madrid.) We created this paella for a Valentine’s Day date meal using ingredients from the Indy Winter Farmer’s Market.
  • Italian White Bean Soup is one of our favorite simple and flavorful soups – we love to make it in the autumn and winter. We also collaborated with some friends on a video.
  • How to Start Growing Herbs We created our own video this summer about how to start growing fresh herbs, which are our favorite things to cook with! Herbs absolutely revolutionize your cooking, and growing and cooking with them are one of our favorite parts of summer.

What keeps you ready and raring to post? Why do you blog?
Food blogging is nice because you always have to eat, so we always have a reason to get inspired! “Why blog” is a great question. For us, we do it for many reasons, but most of all — for love.

We love cooking and eating together, we love learning about food and health, we love the community we’ve become connected to, and we love having a creative outlet together. We’ve come to know so many wonderful, generous, talented, and inspiring people through blogging – both in our community here in Indianapolis, and around our country and the world. It’s been amazing the way our lives have changed through having this outlet to learn from.

As a husband and wife duo, well, how is that working out? Do you split up who writes what? How’s that work?
It actually works out wonderfully (good thing we like each other!). We even work together professionally during the day as well – at a small technical writing firm.

Then after hours, we work together on the blog, but definitely split up the duties — Sonja does most of the writing, recipe planning, and food styling; Alex does most of the photography, techie back-end work, and social media. But we always cook together!

You are cooking healthier, uncomplicated meals using whole foods. What’s your favorite thing to cook with?
We love anything fresh and local! A few of our favorite ingredients are garlic, olive oil, fresh herbs, sweet potatoes, greens (like kale and chard), and whole grains (like quinoa or farro).

If you could have five people over for dinner (living or dead), who would they be–and why? Also, what would you serve?
Gosh, these type of questions are hard! There are so many people we’d love to have for dinner – famous, ordinary, friends, family, strangers — we just love getting to know people over a good meal.

For the purposes of this question, we’ll go with a themed answer by having some of our major food inspirations around the table: Julia Child, Mark Bittman, Michael Pollan, Alton Brown, and Jose Andres. That would be an interesting meal!

Is there anything else that you would like little Indiana readers to know about you or your blog?
We are just so thankful to everyone who has helped teach us about food, healthy eating, photography, and community as part of this process! So many wonderful people have welcomed us into their lives and helped us along the way, from Indiana farmers to chefs to fellow food bloggers.

All our ad revenue at A Couple Cooks goes to projects we believe in (see Clicks for a Cause), so it’s exciting to be able to use the blog to give back a little too. We’re excited to have recently been a part of writing a benefit cookbook for a vocational culinary arts training program in Cambodia for at-risk women, run by a non-profit based in Indiana (see our Cookbook page for more information on the project).

Thanks so much for chatting with us, Jessica! We’re excited to know little Indiana, and continue to follow what you’re doing.

Two Peas in a Pod

Follow the lead of Alex and Sonja and ditch the processed, preservative-filled food. Enjoy what you eat! Thanks to A Couple Cooks for popping over to little Indiana today.

Small Towns: Destinations, not Drive-Thrus! I’m Jessica Nunemaker and THIS is little Indiana!

Find pictures in Indiana on my Flickr photostream or on the new little Indiana Tumblr blog.

Just don’t forget to tell ’em that  little Indiana sent you!

Don’t miss a moment. Subscribe to little Indiana and receive instant updates to stay on top of everything “little.”

little Indiana: Where to Stay, Play, and Eat in Small Towns in Indiana. Discovering Indiana’s best small towns! Now get little Indiana on your Kindle.

Targeted. Relevant. Affordable! little Indiana advertising.