Hi, I’m Seidy Lopez — the cook behind Spoonful Cravings.
I live in Guápiles, in the county of Pococí, Limón — the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. I have been cooking for more than 40 years: first for my own family, and for many of those years as a cook in local sodas, the small family-run restaurants where most Costa Ricans eat their everyday meals. Cooking for other people is the only work I have ever really wanted to do.
I learned on a wood-fired stove
My mother taught me to cook on a fogón — a wood-fired stove. No timers, no thermometers, no measuring cups. You learned by watching, by smelling, and above all by tasting as you went. Everything I know about seasoning, about patience, and about cooking well with whatever you happen to have in the kitchen, I learned standing next to her.
My signature dish is olla de carne, the Costa Rican beef and vegetable stew that simmers for hours with yuca, plantain, chayote, corn and potato. It is the one my family asks for at every birthday, and the one people still remember me by.
Why I started this website
I wanted a place to share my love of cooking, and to leave something behind: a legacy of my mother, and of my family. Recipes disappear when nobody writes them down. My mother never wrote hers — they lived in her hands, and I have spent 40 years trying to keep them alive. This site is where I write mine down.
What you’ll find here
The recipes on Spoonful Cravings are everyday food: 30-minute dinners, comfort food, soups, pasta, salads and desserts, written for busy home cooks. They are not all Costa Rican — but they are all cooked the way my mother taught me. Simple ingredients, honest seasoning, and instructions written the way I would explain them to a friend standing in my kitchen.
Every recipe published here is cooked and tasted in my kitchen first. If a dish is not good enough to serve at my own table, it does not go on the site. My son handles the technical side of the website; I take care of the food.
Thank you for stopping by, and happy cooking.
— Seidy
Find Us Online
Follow along for new recipes and everyday cooking inspiration:
Questions, or a recipe you’d like me to try? Write to me here.