Cindy Motter:Food Writer, Recipe Developer & Storyteller
Some days, when the house is still and the Oregon pines are brushing against the windows, I can hear the faint hum of my grandmother’s kitchen. It’s funny how memory travels the smell of warm bread, the scrape of a wooden spoon, the soft laughter of family leaning close around a table. Those small sounds shaped me long before I knew I’d spend my life writing about food, stories, and the quiet rituals that hold families together.
My name is Cindy Motter, and I’m the writer, recipe developer, and resident storyteller here at MisterRecipes.com a space that began as a humble notebook of family dishes and somehow grew into a living archive of moments, meals, and meaning.
I was born in 1983, raised in a tangle of Midwestern simplicity and Eastern European heritage, where every recipe came with a story and every story had a little flour on it. Today, I live in Bend, Oregon, with my husband Ethan a graphic designer with a photographer’s eye and our two kids, Olivia and James, who have strong opinions about everything from soup texture to cookie softness. Our home doubles as my test kitchen, writing nook, and the place where most of my memories start (usually with a sink full of dishes).
How MisterRecipes Began
When I launched MisterRecipes back in 2013, I didn’t intend to create a magazine-style publication or a digital cookbook. I simply wanted a place to keep the stories behind the recipes the ones that didn’t fit on index cards or in neat recipe boxes.
Over time, readers gravitated to the essays I call “Stories from the Skillet” little narrative windows where a memory leads the way into a recipe. A snowstorm that turns into a pot of chowder. A hard year softened by banana bread. A Sunday roast becoming a lesson in slowing down.
Food isn’t just food here. It’s emotion, history, gratitude, grief, resilience, and the beautiful everyday practice of caring for one another.
My Writing Philosophy
I’ve never believed recipes should be cold instructions. I see them as letters little conversations between the writer and the cook, the cook and the moment.
My style leans toward:
- Warm, memoir-like intros
- Sensory details: the hiss of butter, the glow of honey
- Honest, reflective pacing
- A touch of gentle humor
- And always, a human heartbeat underneath
I like to think of my prose as a quiet kitchen light left on for anyone who needs it.
As I often tell new readers:
“I don’t chase perfection in food I chase connection.”
What I Cook
My culinary style is what I call “modern comfort food with roots.”
The dishes I write about most often blend:
- Familiar American home-cooking
- Soft nods to my Eastern European family lineage
- Local Oregon produce
- A deep love for slow, mindful cooking
Some of my readers’ favorite recipes are the ones that carry a little story in their apron pocket: Rosemary Honey Roast Chicken, Sweet Corn Chowder with Smoked Paprika, and Chocolate Espresso Banana Bread the one I bake whenever life feels too loud.
Writing, Life & Everything In Between
When I’m not developing recipes or editing stories, you’ll usually find me:
- Testing bread dough while the kids do homework
- Walking under the tall pines with Ethan, talking about light, angles, and dinner
- Collecting small moments that will someday grow into essays
- Or simply sitting at my kitchen table, letting soup simmer and thoughts settle
My upcoming collection, “Everyday Gratitude: A Year in the Kitchen,” gathers many of those reflections — the tiny truths I’ve learned while stirring, chopping, burning, fixing, and beginning again.
Why I Write
Food is my language.
Writing is how I translate it.
Both have taught me that comfort isn’t found in grand gestures it’s found in the everyday act of feeding the ones we love, ourselves included.
If you’re new here, welcome. Truly.
I hope you’ll stay awhile, read a story, cook something warm, and maybe find a piece of your own life between the lines.
C. Motter