About Us

Hi, I'm Mari — pull up a stool, dinner's almost ready. Spoon and Simmer started as a handful of recipes I kept sending to friends who texted me some version of the same question: how do you actually get a real dinner on the table on a Tuesday? It has since grown into a full pantry of tested dinners, breakfasts, soups, salads, baked goods, drinks, and seasonal favorites — but the goal has never changed. I want you to close your laptop or your phone and actually cook something good, without a fight.

Where This Site Came From

I'm Marisol Bennett — Mari to pretty much everyone — a recipe developer, former sous chef, and mom of two cooking out of a 1920s bungalow kitchen in Portland, Oregon. I learned to cook on a step stool in San Antonio, wedged between my mother and my Abuela Rosa, who measured everything in palmfuls and swore the real recipe lives in your hands, not on paper. Our house was a happy collision of two food cultures: my mom's slow-simmered pots and fresh masa, my dad's Midwestern casseroles and unshakable devotion to pie. Every recipe I write still lives somewhere in that delicious middle ground.

After studying nutrition and dietetics, I spent six years on restaurant lines and eventually became a sous chef at a farm-to-table kitchen here in Portland. That job taught me speed, technique, and one lesson worth more than any of it: almost every kitchen disaster is fixable. Curdled sauce, broken vinaigrette, an over-salted pot of soup — I've rescued all of it, usually mid dinner-rush. When my son Leo was born in 2017, I left the line for my own small, mighty home kitchen, and Spoon and Simmer launched in 2018 as my long-form answer to that recurring question about weeknight dinners. By 2020 it had become my full-time job, and more than 400 tested recipes later, I still can't quite believe this is the work.

What You'll Actually Find Here

This is a recipe site built around real weeknights and real Sundays. That means hearty dinners like one-pot gnocchi chicken pot pie, slow-cooker beef stew that tastes like a Sunday well spent, and mac and cheese so creamy it earns its own applause — alongside breakfasts, appetizers, salads, soups, baking projects, drinks, and seasonal dishes that follow the farmers market calendar rather than a trend cycle. If a recipe takes three hours, I'll say so upfront. If something is genuinely quick and easy, that label means exactly that — nothing more, nothing dressed up.

How I Actually Work

Every recipe published here is tested at least three times before it reaches you, including once by what I lovingly call "distracted Mari" — cooking with one eye on the kids, the phone buzzing, dinner running late — because that's the version of you I'm actually cooking for. If a step is unclear under those conditions, it gets rewritten. I keep headnotes short on purpose; you came here for the ingredient list, not a scroll through my childhood, so I try to respect your time and get you to the recipe fast.

I also believe food isn't a moral issue. You won't find "guilt-free" language or cheat-day guilt-tripping on this site — just good food, made doable, whether that's a 30-minute Tuesday dinner or a slow braise you start on a lazy Sunday. You can read more about how recipes get developed, tested, and fact-checked on our Editorial Policy page, which lays out exactly how we hold ourselves accountable.

The Kitchen Behind the Blog

These days I cook, photograph, and write from that same 1920s bungalow, sharing kitchen duty with my husband Dave (chief taste-tester and dishwasher), my kids Leo and Ivy (my toughest and most honest critics), and Biscuit the beagle, who handles floor cleanup with real dedication. Weekends usually involve the Saturday farmers market, where Ivy picks out one "weird vegetable" for us to figure out together, a zucchini patch that turns slightly alarming every August, and a sourdough starter named Chuck that I keep alive out of pure stubbornness. You can also find more of our kitchen life and recipe inspiration on Pinterest.

Trust, Transparency, and How We Handle the Business Side

Spoon and Simmer is a small, independent kitchen — but I still think readers deserve full transparency about how the site runs. That's why we keep clear, plain-language pages covering things like our Disclosure and how we handle any recommended products, along with our Privacy Policy explaining how your information is treated when you visit. If you're a brand or fellow food writer interested in working together, our Collaboration page has the details.

Let's Get Cooking

Whether you landed here searching for a fast weeknight fix or a slow Sunday project, I'm genuinely glad you found your way to this table. If you have a question, a recipe request, or just want to tell me your pot pie turned out great, reach out anytime through our Contact page or email me directly at [email protected]. Grab a spoon — let's get simmering.