Our Story

My love for dishware that looks like food started in childhood. Summer Saturdays were spent cruising the streets of Cape Cod with my grandparents in search of yard sales. I learned two things from my yard sale days. The first was how to haggle. My grandfather was a master haggler, and he considered all sticker prices to be opening offers (whether the sticker read $25 or $0.25). The second was that I love dishes that look like food—and if there were any to be found at a yard sale, I had to have them. This was how I wound up bringing home a large platter in the shape of a peapod, a devilled egg dish painted like a hen, and various other yard sale treasures over the years (to my parents’ chagrin).

My love of cookware that looks like food only grew over the years, and I continued collecting more pieces for my kitchen. One Thanksgiving, well into adulthood, I debuted a cast iron pumpkin on our holiday table. It was a gift from a friend, and one of the crown jewels of my collection. My family and I got to talking about the pumpkin and my other cookware that looks like food, and in that conversation, my dear sister coined the term “literal cookery.” As soon as the concept was named, the idea was born to gather all the Literal Cookery in one place and share my passion with other like-minded people.

Because, at the end of the day, isn’t it just more fun to prepare and serve food with cookware that looks like food? (That’s a rhetorical question. Obviously.) Thank you for visiting Literal Cookery!