About

Welcome to Cooks & Poets. 

The kitchen was my refuge at a very early age. I fell in love with baking when I was nine and found myself working in a private kitchen in Los Angeles, serving Holly­wood’s elite my blue­berry pies by the time I was nine­teen. But the film indus­try’s allure was too strong, and I ulti­mately chose that path which set forth a career and trajec­tory that some would say was just too good to be true. 

However, in last couple years, I have emerged back into my kitchen because ulti­mately baking and cooking are a labor of love. When I was baking early on, I had no idea about what I know now in regards to fresh ingre­di­ents and the power of plants. So I get to take that new knowl­edge back into the kitchen and start exper­i­ment­ing from a new place. In addi­tion to my other work, I served as a creative direc­tor along­side my husbands busi­ness. He has taught me about what consti­tutes great design, or should I say he has drawn out of me — my eye for design that was always there. 

I keep the kitchen minimal but surrounded by tools and pieces that I have collected along the way — using cutlery designed by world-renowned archi­tects, porce­lain on perma­nent display at MoMA, and hand­crafted one of kind bowls and tools, not because they look pretty but because these tools are func­tional and made to last for gener­a­tions to come. In that way, they have envi­ron­men­tal sympa­thy. I wanted to find a way to share my passion for food and the func­tion­al­ity and beauty of good design together in one place — and that is how the Cooks & Poets shop came about. 

Nature informs many of my choices as a human being and over the last few years we have been search­ing for a piece of land to grow our family. In late 2020, we finally found that place situ­ated in rural mid coast Maine and began a journey to steward and culti­vate beauty along­side Mother Nature. The concept for Cooks & Poets was born in January of 2020 during a trip to England with my daugh­ter, and just before the pandemic and the passing of my Papa.. So I had no choice but to pour my heart into this idea, to get through it all last year. I buried myself in my loft and began creat­ing and shoot­ing Cooks & Poets while watch­ing the world and my own, unravel.

The shop proceeds will help support the farm and field restorations. 

If you have any ques­tions don’t hesi­tate to send an email or DM, I respond to all of them. Thank you for stopping by. 

Founder,

Kristen Roland c. 2021