Get in the Spirit with Moorestown Cooks Tour

If you need a little extra incentive to get you in the Christmas spirit (besides Black Friday blowout sales), the Curtis Auxiliary of Virtua Memorial Hospital has just the thing.

Once again this year, the auxiliary—one of four at Virtua—will host its annual Cooks Tour of Moorestown, inviting thousands of people to visit several finely decorated homes in town.

Auxiliary member Gina Zegel said the event got its name from its original incarnation as a tour of Moorestown kitchens. Event organizers would bake goods in the kitchens of the homes on the tour and sell them.

Eventually the tours moved out of the kitchen into the rest of the house, she said, and became less about cookies and desserts (though you can still buy the gingerbread men) and more about the homes and decorations themselves.

“The homes are beautifully decorated,” either by the auxiliary or the homeowner (or both), said Zegel. “It’s sort of one of the kickoffs of the holiday season. I always find when I go on the tour, it gets me going.”

Plenty of others seem to share Zegel’s sentiment, as the Cooks Tour attracts thousands to Moorestown each year, many of them from places like Philadelphia and Bucks County. She said they expect to have around 3,000 during the all-day tour on Wednesday, Dec. 7.

All the money raised through the event will benefit the Maternal Child Health Expansion at Virtua Memorial Hospital. Zegel said the auxiliary raised $35,000 last year for Virtua. They typically raise anywhere from $20,000-40,000.

“It’s our main fundraiser for the year,” she said.

There will be five homes on the tour: the Wittmann home on Main Street, the Gepp home in Stanwick Glen, the Walker home on Hickory Lane, the Coltre home on Pheasant Fields Lane, and the Konzelmann home in the Grand on Fells Wood Drive.

“We have all kinds of homes,” Zegel said. “Some of them are new, some of them are old. Some of them are large, some of them are small.”

Pre-sale tickets are $20 and are available up until the day before the tour at the following area merchants:

• Ramblewood Garden Center - Mt. Laurel
• Talbots - Mt. Laurel

Tickets can also be purchased the day of the tour for $25 at the Moorestown Community House between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. and at any of the homes during the tour.

The tour begins at 10 a.m. and goes till 8 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 7.