Meet Brenda + Chelsea

Hi, I’m Brenda.

Hi, I’m Brenda. Recipes are often extremely wordy, even convoluted, with pages of detailed directions. Have you found them eloquent but excessive? Or expended so much energy reading there’s none left to execute? The internet and cookbooks are full of such recipes ... here those recipes have been vetted and re-written to fit the kitchen of a home cook who loves good food and embraces efficiency. I believe anyone can make really great food, I hope my recipes can assist you in your efforts. 

In “Brenda’s Tips” you’ll find the things I’d say to you if we were cooking together. Perhaps I’ll define a term or explain a technique. Sometimes I’ll share a detail not critical to the recipe, but helpful in its own way. I find great joy in cooking and hope you will too.

Hi, I’m Chelsea.

I met Brenda when I moved to Manhattan, NY, in February of 2012. I was hoping to run a half-marathon by the end of the year and my roommate at the time told me I needed to meet Brenda, the redhead girl at church who was one of 13 kids raised on a potato farm in Eastern Oregon.

The next Sunday after the service, I walked up to Brenda and blurted out, “Hi, I’m Chelsea. My roommate told me you’re planning to run the Hamptons Half this year and I want to too! Want to train together?”

After a typical Brenda look that said, “Who are you and why are you talking to me?” she invited me to run with her the next Saturday. To her surprise I was able to navigate slow, early morning, local trains, met her outside of her apartment, and ran the entire 10 miles with her. And that was the beginning of our friendship.

After a year of knowing each other, we became roommates. We lived in apartment #2319 on Wall Street for 2.5 years. It was a 300 sq ft studio down the street from the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall. We slept on a bunk bed (you better believe I called the top bunk), and Brenda cooked delicious food. 

Brenda has this insane love of cooking and channeled all of her creative energy into making delicious sweet and savory food after working her accounting job. At the time she HATED leftovers, so I’d happily eat dinner with her and would take the leftovers to work. I was living a very charmed life.

Whenever anyone complimented Brenda on her cooking and how no one makes food like Brenda, she’d respond, “If you can follow a recipe, you can make Brenda Food.”

In 2016 I moved to Salt Lake City, UT, and started missing Brenda Food. I began asking her for recipes, and I was able to recreate the Brenda Food of NYC!

If you can follow a recipe, you can, indeed, make Brenda Food.

Three years after bugging Brenda for recipes, we decided to create a blog to house all of her recipes.

And Brenalou Bakes was born.

Our goal is not only to give people access to Brenda Food, it’s to help people become good stewards in their kitchen. Thank you for joining us :)

xoxo

Brenda + Chelsea