I recently re-signed up for regular emails from one of my favorite food bloggers, Love & Lemons, and I’m so glad I did. Not only did I start getting great recipes again, but I found out about her monthly cooking club challenge. Here’s how this online cooking club works and what I think about it.
How this online cooking club works
It seems that online cooking clubs can be free or paid. The one I tried from Love & Lemons happens to be free. This cooking club challenge is done monthly to engage readers with the blog and gain followers on Instagram. The reason I mentioned a challenge is that it’s also done as a sort of contest with a winner randomly selected to receive a gift. For this one, the gift was a $200 gift card.
The cooking club challenge was sent via the newsletter in the first few days of the month. It had a beautiful picture of the dish to be made and a link to a blog post with the contest details and a link to the recipe blog post. The picture was so very enticing and with my love of cooking, I just had to click to find out more.
Virtual versus in-person cooking clubs
While I didn’t exactly make any friends from this cooking club challenge, it was great fun and stress-free. I was given almost an entire month to get the ingredients and make time to cook the recipe. I also had a chance to cook with an ingredient that I do not buy often.
Photographing the results
After making the recipe, I took a picture of it and then followed the directions for entering the gift card drawing. I sent one picture via email before the deadline which was the last day of the month. For two bonus entries, I left a comment on the recipe blog post and I posted my photo on Instagram with a tag to the blogger and a hashtag.
I don’t know if I won yet and honestly don’t expect to win. With that said, this was more fun than I expected it to be and it inspired my first blog post for this website.
What I think about this cooking club challenge
I was able to look forward to making a new recipe when it was convenient for me and I was given a month to do it. There was no hassle of matching a specific day or time to my schedule and then dreading it as one more thing I have to do. I bought the ingredients when it was convenient and made the recipe when I was in the mood to cook.
When I did eventually make the recipe, it didn’t look quite as beautiful as the food blogger of course, but it definitely tasted great. Very often, I will substitute ingredients or maybe leave something out that I don’t have or don’t think is healthy (like coconut-based ingredients) but not this time. I followed the recipe to a tee.
Once done, I tasted my results and it was really good. Although my immediate family didn’t taste it, I made it on a day that we had company and they LOVED it so much they asked to take the leftovers home.
I had so much fun and enjoyment from this cooking club challenge that I’m looking forward to the next one. I’m also inspired to improve upon my food presentation and photography skills. I can’t wait!
Looking for more free cooking clubs
Have you tried a cooking club before? What was your experience?
Know of any other online cooking clubs that I can try?
Please share in the comments below or send me a message here.