The Thrill of the Grill
Aimee L. Cook It’s in Aimee Cook’s blood to cook well and feed a crowd—after all, she’s Italian. Both her mom and dad have cooked professionally but it was her grandmothers—little nonna and big nonna—who taught her the intricacies of Italian cooking. Whether canning, rolling ravioli or making Italian desserts, Cook credits her continued love of feeding friends and family to her lineage of masterful Italians. “We still to this day make a ton of those family recipes,” Cook explains. Preserving her family’s recipes and methods was, in fact, the beginning of Cook’s foray into food writing. In 2012, she and a friend started posting family friendly recipes and photos on their
Blogger site called Eating Thyme. Once she started writing about food professionally for Devour Utah, more publications followed and eventually Eating Thyme ended. But in 2017, Cook created GatherNoshAndSavor. com to once again catalog family recipes as well as share restaurant news and events she learns about while covering food-related topics. “And then I got a Traeger, and it changed my life,” Cook says. Her love of the smoker/oven/grill is well documented online and in print. And it’s the Traeger that creates the star of the Thanksgiving meal—an 18-pound fresh turkey from Utah Natural Meat & Milk (5600 W. 7400 South, West Jordan, 801-896-3276, UtahNaturalMeat.com) Once the turkey is prepped, Cook says, cooking it is a breeze. And the
Aimee L. Cook
results? Picture-perfect golden brown skin and moist, slightly smoky meat. Let the post-Thanksgiving turkey coma begin! (By Heather L. King) GatherNoshAndSavor.com
Aimee L. Cook’s Grilled Turkey
20 Devour Utah • november 2019