ABOUT ME

I come from a "food family." Food has always been a part of my life.

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I grew up in west Texas, where my father and maternal grandfather ran a beef cattle feedyard together. My mother was an avid baker who taught me and my siblings to cook starting from a young age. Around the time I graduated high school, my dad sold the feedyard and bought an already iconic downtown diner, which they ran for almost 25 years.

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I've always loved to cook. Learning how to make traditional dishes whose formula seems almost like magic when the ingredients come together. Learning to replicate recipes I've loved at friends' homes and restaurants through the years. Taking standard recipes and running them through my "this is good, but would be truly GREAT if only..." culinary filter.

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I moved from Texas to British Columbia, Canada, in 2004, and cooking instantly transformed from a pastime to an important skill: I quickly realized that unless I wanted to hop on a plane, many beloved foods of my youth simply weren't accessible anymore unless I could make them from scratch. I also have a brother who's a classically trained chef who specializes in southern American cuisine, and he's always there to advise whenever the going gets tough.

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I'm obsessive not only about cooking, but also food history, food chemistry, and even the anthropology of food, and reading about those things have also greatly broadened by understanding of the things we eat and why.

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My friends have been urging me for years to consolidate some of my food knowledge, tips, tricks, recipes, and highlights off of "regular social media" and into a focused food blog, and so I hope they're not wrong about that.