Welcome to Cooking with Virginia!
Need inspo for healthy recipes? Cooking with Virginia is packed with real-life tips, cooking techniques, and good and good-for-you recipes.
Each post has easy-to-follow instructions and helpful hints. It’s a mix of indulgent and healthy recipes — food that I eat and make in my own kitchen (and sometimes on TV.)
Here, you’ll find chef-driven recipes for home cooks yet still made with real-life ingredients. Let me tell you what you won’t find. An over-obsession with WW points or restrictive dieting. I believe you’ve got to mix it up. Sometimes you need to eat the ding dang cake. Who wants to eat sad food? Who wants deprivation? Nobody.
Hopefully, you’ll feel like I am by your side! I promise my recipes are rigorously tested and are essential, foolproof dishes you actually want to make and eat.
Because of my own journey with health gain and weight loss, I am an enthusiastic cheerleader for others seeking to make lifestyle changes in the interest of feeling healthier and happier, too!
Bon Appétit, Y’all!
Virginia Willis
How to Plan the Safe and Perfect Picnic
As a kid, my Southern summers were spent fishing at our family pond and swimming in the ocean, pool, or lake and catching fireflies with
Baked Risotto
Classic Italian risotto is creamy and comforting. Tender rice flavored with wine and nutty-rich Parmesan cheese and sweet butter. Do you love risotto, but
Mama, Faith, and her Classic Poundcake
Mama, it’s a word that is veritably primal, one of the very first words tiny human baby mouths and brains can conjure. I am a
Cornmeal Cake with Strawberries and Vanilla Cream
Cornmeal Cake is somewhere between a cobbler and cake. Unlike a cobbler, the fruit is served on the side. And, unlike most cakes, the batter
Steel Magnolias Armadillo Butt Cupcakes
A couple of weeks ago cohosted the Sunday afternoon matinee of Steel Magnolias! (I also shared a recipe for a shrub I call “The Shelby.”)
Golden Vidalia Onion Cheesy Pull-Apart Biscuits
Who doesn’t love Vidalia onions!? Georgia grown Vidalia onions are America’s favorite and perhaps its most well-known sweet onion. Vidalia onions are my absolute go-to.
Strawberry Shrub aka “The Shelby”
Are you concerned your liver might cry uncle before lockdown ends? Need an NA alternative? Or, you need to spritz up your afternoon cocktail? Check
Comfort Food: One Pot Pasta
I hope this finds you and your family safe and well. I feel like I have started every email with that sentence for the past
Cooking with Virginia: Crunchy Creole Ranch Salmon
Ranch dressing is as American as apple pie and baseball. Americans love ranch dressing. Everyone loves ranch dressing. Even snooty chefs and foodies that look
Tips on Preventing Food Waste + Clementine Marmalade
My friends and family have laughed at me “getting my inner homesteader on” while we are social distancing. I am always pretty good about food