Lauren Groveman Videos Shares Her Love of Cooking

by Joan R. Simon

(January 18, 2007) Lauren Groveman has shared her recipes and cooking tips on TV, over the radio, in the Larchmont Gazette, as an author of two cookbooks and as a teacher in every possible venue you can imagine (including Rikers Island). But the place where Lauren (as her Gazette readers know her) likes to cook the most – and where she believes it is most important for her viewers, readers and students to achieve success -- is at home.

Lauren Groveman in her Larchmont kitchen models the apron she designed.

For all her sophisticated culinary skills, Lauren cares most about sharing meals at home. She brings that devotion to every class she teaches, showing her students how “to give pleasure to those you care about.” She also brings it to the adolescent female inmates she teaches at Rikers Island, where they not only prepare the food (with one knife – “it’s a prison, after all’) and clean up, but sit down and enjoy a meal together.

Lauren is a self-taught cook who believes anyone can learn the tricks of the culinary trade to enhance a home life. An actress, she married at 19 without knowing a single thing about cooking. With no family tradition of cooking, Lauren made it her priority to conquer the kitchen on her own, devouring books, experimenting tirelessly in the kitchen, “raising kids, and creating the kind of home I didn’t have.” And from those experiences she not only became a master cook, but learned about “the power of shared meals.”

Over the years, Lauren has taken her culinary vision beyond her Larchmont Manor home to a broad public through a PBS televisions series, as well as local and Food Network shows, an award-winning radio program, and private classes all over the country. Her two books, Lauren Groveman’s Kitchen, Nurturing Food for Family and Friends and The I Love To Cook Book (Rediscovering the Joy of Cooking for Family and Friends), have brought her into many more homes.

First-Time Videos

Now Lauren has discovered a new way to share her love and knowledge of cooking -- through teaching videos, available on her website (www.LaurenGroveman.com). Cooking for a Delicious Life offers more than 11 hours of highly detailed, hands-on demonstrations divided into five main collections: Learn the Basics; Salads, Soups, Sides & Desserts; Condiments, Sauces, Crisps, Puffs & Noodles; Entrées: from Elegant to Down Home; and Baking “Sweet & Savory.” They are available as 45 separate, downloadable segments or five DVDs, sold individually or as a set.

The videos are “not just about how-to. My teaching style is also about why,” Lauren explains. “Great food is a catalyst. It’s not the last stop on the train.” She believes that “when people are sitting around the table talking and eating,” good things happen. And she has a message for mothers of all stripes. “If you’re home, you can learn to be creative,” she says. And if you work all day, preparing home-cooked meals is the perfect way “to feel less regretful about being away from home.”

About to become available from the website is the 100% cotton apron she designed. “It’s the apron I’ve always wanted,” Lauren says, with three main pockets as well as a smaller one suited for glasses or an ipod, two towel straps, buttons to hold a potholder and an adjustable neck strap. Matching kitchen towels will also be available - and oven mitts are coming soon.

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