The “about me” page on this website has most of the details of my life relevant to a casual recipe searcher. But today I’m going to go one or two steps beyond that to explain my relationship with food, which culminated in my decision to start culinary school at JWU this August. Just, you know, laying some groundwork for future meditations!

Not a Foodie*

I grew up in Kansas, landlocked in the breadbasket of America. Overall, my family wasn’t a foodie family (though I have to admit they have pretty great taste today). No one was particularly passionate about cooking, though there were classic holiday dishes and at least a few favorite recipes that my mom and grandma(s) would make for us on special occasions. What I remember are a lot of straight-from-frozen chicken breasts or pork chops for dinners. Kansas in the 1990s’ wasn’t known for it’s food scene anyway, aside from BBQ. I hate ranch dressing and don’t generally enjoy mayonnaise or sour cream unless artfully disguised in the resulting dish. Those ingredients were staples in a Kansas pantry.

However, I heard stories of a distant, departed aunt who made a delectable squirrel pie. A great grandfather who hosted Friday fish fries during the summer. And a great uncle who was a chef in the army and lovingly passed down the Dayton family specialty of popcorn cooked in bacon grease. This same side of my family is the source of a ton of gastrointestinal health concerns, by the way. Regardless, I’ve started to think my enjoyment of all things cooking may have roots a few generations back.

A First Taste

One of my first jobs was at Dairy Queen—a fast food joint that specializes in soft serve ice cream. I worked every station, even the fry station. I still remember how to make the iconic swirl on top of DQ cones. It was ironic that I worked at an establishment with such a calorie dense menu, because throughout my adolescence I really struggled with feeding myself.

Unfortunately, I shared a non-unique preoccupation with being thin. I was inundated with messaging around the power of being hungry, and found myself seeped in paranoia around the “healthiest” diet. At the time, it completely overshadowed any joy and wonder around food, like how nourishment is a good thing and how therapeutic it can be to grow and prepare your own food.

Living in Belgium for a little while started changing my thinking. Traveling outstide of the U.S. makes one realize how effed up our food systems are and how divorced we’ve become from what we eat. So as soon as I moved back to the States and got a big girl job, I set out to teach myself how to cook. This interest grew rapidly despite my lack of skill. I think I made up for it in adventurousness, though I do feel bad for some of the early dishes I forced on my friends.

Beginning of the Cursory Cook

The dishes I made each week slowly got better, but as with any dish, the art and beauty was fleeting. I wanted to do more with the things I cooked, to give these labors more of a sense of permanence. So then came the cooking blog and a foray into food photography. The food blog field was already crowded when I launched this site in 2015, but it only became more popular from there. I worked 40+ hours per week at my job AND tried to keep up with a grueling posting pace, leading me to wonder if a food blog was really my passion. I am nothing if not insecure about my abilities, and showcasing those abilities or mistakes for all the world to see is quite stressful.

But I wished to inspire people in the same way I was inspired by beautiful images and stories about food. I kept up a bi-monthly recipe sharing newsletter (timed with new and full moons, of course) for a year or so, all the while engaging in fairly extensive “research”: I make at least three homecooked meals per week, almost all of them new-to-me recipes. I log those experiences and catalog the ones I love in order to share them later. While people think my partner is lucky for reaping the benefits of my passion, he knows I don’t usually cook the same thing twice unless it’s something spectacular (see: Arroz Caldo).

Anyway, with the photography, research, and writing involved, I often felt pressure to create for the food blog when my cup was quite empty. So, I stopped.

And Here We Are

The pandemic, man. It obviously turned the whole world on its head. Remote work, quarantine. It could have been a super productive time to have a food blog! To bake my face off! To train for a marathon!

None of that happened, though, and instead I floundered about experiencing burnout and dissatisfaction with the configuration of my life. I was no longer feeling inspired by my professional career but did not know what to do with myself otherwise. I took stretches of time off to feel better, got on antidepressants, and made some AMAZING friends online who helped me get in touch with what I really wanted and needed. Their intuitive guidance and unwavering support helped me—as did a therapist, life coach, and a (third!) reading of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron—to finally make a huge decision.

So this is how I decided the time was right to go to culinary school. I chose to specialize in sustainable food systems because there are some important choices we need to make as a society, and I want to understand and be a part of the future food and agriculture. In my heart, though, I am always thinking of how to make food culture more welcoming.* I struggled to learn how to nourish myself but I don’t want others to live that way. That’s the long and short of it, thanks for bearing with me! And I promise, some more recipes and proper food content are coming soon 🙂

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*One way, I think, is to retire the word “foodie” from our lexicon. It’s an unhelpful term that encompasses liking to eat, liking to cook, and/or liking to look at pictures of food, to read about food, ostensibly to learn about food. It’s no longer descriptive, rather mostly confusing. Also, it sounds dumb. I’d rather be a cookie.