Cooking Origins

I grew up on a farm. Mainly a horse farm but we also had chickens, geese, sheep, and most importantly, puppies. Connecting with where my food came from has always been a part of my life. I was raised on a homestead and my mother maintained a bountiful garden. As a kid, our summer family meals reflected the abundance in the backyard. In the summer, the garden harvest would become our salads and sides. At various times butchered our sheep. While I couldn’t stomach eating them, the rest of my family could.

As a child, I loved having horses, sheep, and puppies and I hated vegetables. I was picked on for having farm animals that weren’t cows when I was a teenager, so eventually I disconnected from the herd. It wasn’t until recently, in my late 20s, that I realized how blessed I was to be raised the way that I was.

I started utilizing the kitchen when I was six but my mother would say that I started as an infant, imitating her in the kitchen. My first memory of cooking is of making egg noodles. Egg noodles turned to boxed mac and cheese, and then I learned how to “doctor it up”. It wasn’t long before I was baking boxed brownies and frying homemade chicken nuggets.

I’ve spent many days and nights with loved ones in the comfort of a kitchen. Doesn’t matter who’s, if there’s a sink and a stove I will feel safe. I cherish those times. Probably because of the childhood memories I have of cooking with relatives. I have fond childhood memories of my father coming home on weekends and making pancakes, chocolate chip cookies, and quiche with us. My Abuela, who lived across the country in Los Angeles my entire life, would cook with us whenever we were together. Our shared love of food and cooking carried through our conversations up until she passed.

Learning to cook opened a whole new world for me. The farm I grew up on was located in Narrowsburg, NY, a small hamlet in Sullivan County, where the most culturally diverse food options around me were pizza and Chinese food. My mother’s stocked pantry was my ticket to the rest of the world and cooking was the vehicle to get me there.

Combine food with social circles and you have my entire adolescence and teenage experience. When I was a teenager, my parents organized dinner parties to bring awareness to the dangers of fracking and I would help cook for them. My first job was at Mildred’s Lane helping the chefs and interns set up for their Social Saturday dinners. By the time I was in high school, I was hosting dinner parties for my friends. And in my 20’s I began cooking dinner for the “family,” whoever’s family that may be.

I’ve spent a lot of time cooking and I wouldn’t say I’m a chef. I’m not even sure if I would say I’m a good cook. My knife technique isn’t great and I burn things sometimes. I hate boning chicken thighs, I don’t know how to cook steak, and I barely know how to prepare fish. I get scared whenever I’m asked to start the grill. Fuck, I don’t even know how to properly make tortillas. But I know how to cook rice without a rice cooker. I’ve made challah a hundred times. I allegedly nailed latkes on the first try. Ask me to help in the kitchen and I will. Philosophically, when it comes to cooking I am always learning.

I don’t believe you need to be a great chef to be a good cook. And I don’t believe that you need to be a good cook to impress people. The goal of sharing my perspective on cooking and baking is to make it feel approachable, interesting, and digestible.

I love food. I love culture. I love the community. I love the ritual. I love the history. And I love the story. My hope in showing all of these things in one place is that maybe you, too, will fall in love.