Hello there! My name is Carissa and I’m so glad you found my little corner of the internet. I love sharing nourishing recipes along with travel inspiration and fun DIY tutorials. But let me be honest – I didn’t start out as a chef extraordinaire in the kitchen.
I’ve always been fascinated by food. When I was five, I would concoct “soups” and force my little sister to try them. But the term “soup” is used loosely here. It was basically a bowl of lukewarm water with a combination of spices that I snuck from the cabinet after climbing onto the kitchen counter. When my parents caught me, they told me I had to test-taste it first, before giving it to my sister… thus ending that stint of my culinary career.
In high school, I would pore over DVD’s of Good Eats episodes, Food Network shows, and food documentaries. I’d sit on the couch taking vigilant notes, neglecting my homework and school textbooks. I had my priorities, okay?
I experimented with cooking and baking in high school, but during my junior year, I started to fall down the deep, dark spiral of an eating disorder. This actually spiked my intrigue in food, and I would spend hours upon hours each week learning about food.
I’m elated to say that 10 years later, I am recovered from my eating disorder. It’s been a long and painstaking journey. A lot of times it felt like one step forward, three steps back. But it’s possible.
With all that time spent learning about food, you’d have thought I’d be a master in the kitchen. Unfortunately, some things just didn’t click in my brain and I ended up with many failed dishes. The most common culprits to inedible attempts were (1) not reading the directions fully and therefore skipping key steps, and (2) substituting ingredients that wholly changed the recipe. I ended up giving myself food poisoning on several occasions. You’d think once would be enough! After a couple years of this, I was fed up. Needless to say, something needed to change. But I wasn’t learning from my mistakes unless I took time to sit down and write out exactly what I would do differently next time. So I started this blog to track each and every mistake I made. This gave me the space to reflect and begin improving my cooking and baking skills.
You can read through those early attempts and failures, especially if you’re looking for comic relief, or just to feel better about your own skills in the kitchen.
Fast forward to today, and I almost can’t recognize myself. Me, baking French macarons, elaborate layer cakes and gigantic gingerbread houses from scratch?! Practice didn’t make perfect. But practice along with reflecting on what went wrong and reminding myself of what to improve on the next attempt made progress.
So here we are, exploring new foods and new places together. I hope you take some time to look around. If you try any recipes, do let me know how they turn out for you! I’m excited to keep learning, and I hope you join me on this journey.
