Explore the World Through Food

Food is one of the most delicious ways to explore the world.

Cooking With Kimberly draws inspiration from family traditions, travel, regional cooking, the people and places that have influenced my kitchen, and an enduring curiosity about what people eat — and why they eat it.

This growing guide is designed to make that enormous library easier to explore. Browse by country, discover the culinary landscapes that cross political borders, or simply wander somewhere you’ve never tasted before.

Explore by Geography

Start anywhere in the world.

Browse countries by continent and geographic region, then explore provinces, states and other local regions where the Cooking With Kimberly library has more specific coverage.

Some countries already contain dozens — or even hundreds — of recipes and cooking shows. Others currently show 0. Those zeroes are intentional.

A zero simply means that shelf of the Cooking With Kimberly library is waiting to grow.

Every country deserves a place in the index before we have something to put on its shelf. As we cook, research, travel, learn and revisit the thousands of recipes and shows in the CWK archives, those shelves will continue to fill.

About the zeroes: A zero simply means that shelf of the Cooking With Kimberly library is waiting to grow.

Explore Food Geography: Culinary Regions & Landscapes

Food rarely stops at a political border.

Climate, terrain, water, agriculture, fisheries, staple crops, livestock, trade and migration all help shape what becomes possible — and eventually traditional — in a place.

This section explores the culinary landscapes that help explain why food developed the way it did: coasts and islands, river valleys and deltas, mountains and plains, agricultural belts, wetlands, deserts, forests and other regions whose geography has helped shape the pantry.

A culinary landscape may cross several modern countries, while a single country may contain many very different food regions. That’s why these shelves don’t always follow political boundaries.

Countries tell us where. Food geography begins to tell us why.

Food Is More Than Geography

Place shapes food, but people carry food with them.

The ways people live, work, gather, worship, migrate, travel, celebrate, compete, preserve food, care for one another and feed their families create food traditions that can’t be explained by geography alone.

We’ve created an entire Foodways index for that part of the story — exploring cultural and community traditions, family tables and hospitality, farming and fishing, foraging and preservation, street and market food, faith and observance, migration and diaspora, sport and recreation, celebrations, working life and the countless other ways human lives shape what — and how — we eat.

Explore the Foodways Index →

A Living Food Library

No food index can capture every influence behind every dish.

Countries change. Borders change. People migrate. Recipes travel. Climate and growing conditions change. Traditions overlap, mingle and evolve. A dish may quite reasonably appear in several parts of Cooking With Kimberly because there may be several useful ways to find and understand it.

That’s intentional. Cooking With Kimberly is organized for discovery, not exclusivity.

Where a recipe is rooted in a particular tradition, we aim to identify and credit that tradition as accurately as we can. Where something is my own interpretation or simply inspired by another cuisine, we’ll say so.

And we’ll keep learning.

If you notice something we’ve categorized incorrectly, a distinction we’ve missed, or a food tradition or culinary region that deserves better representation, you’re welcome to contact Cooking With Kimberly.

Most importantly, don’t feel obligated to stay somewhere familiar.

Pick a country. Follow a flag. Cross a mountain range. Wander along a coastline. Try an ingredient you’ve never used. Discover how a landscape helped shape a pantry — and then follow the people who carried those foods and traditions with them.

Then come back and explore somewhere else.

Eat Deliciously!