My long-time love affair with food
I like food. No, scratch that, I love food. LOVE. I love buying it, I love cooking it, I love photographing it, and most of all I love eating it (as my 3 stints with Weight Watchers can attest to). My love affair with food started early, like, before Kindergarten (I ate my cereal while watching Yan Can Cook, remember that show?). My grandma would get me to help her in the kitchen – baking cakes, making soup, taste testing (totally my favourite part) and stirring as much as my little arms could take. I had an Easy Bake Oven waaaay before the manufacturer’s suggested age and baked my very own cake in the oven all by myself when I was 7.
My mom was a cook for the first 18 years of my life. She cooked all day for other people and by the time she got home she was too tired and too sick of cooking to make dinner some nights, so I started making dinner for our family when I was in high school. I loved it! I flipped through magazines and cookbooks (no internet then, I’m old yo!) and watched cooking shows on TV looking for new ideas and recipes.
So with all that you’d think I went into the Culinary Arts in college right? Nope, my artistic side called and I became a Graphic Designer. I continued to cook and bake whenever I could and when I met my husband I won his heart with my Barbeque Baked Ribs and Hand Cut Fries (still his favourite meal!). A little voice in my head had been nagging at me to try out cooking professionally, so I took a job in a restaurant and after only a couple of months I became the sous chef. Restaurant kitchens are stressful and political (there’s a reason why Gordon Ramsey is always in such a bad mood!) and my days there left me not only physically exhausted but also emotionally drained. Back to designing professionally and “cooking for fun” it was.
Then blogging became popular, and my love of showing off my culinary confections finally had an outlet! I started my blog and it has been so fun trying new recipes and sharing them with the world. My four year old, Lily, has been watching me cook and bake and her interest in helping has been ignited. She wants to help stir and pour and, of course, taste test. I'm thrilled that she's interested cause I believe cooking is a skill that everyone should have and I plan to teach all 3 of my kids everything I know.
