A little background...

Thank you to everyone for your support about my new little venture. I appreciate your kind words. :)

So, as I said in my first post, Rosy and I were raised very differently. My close friends know the details of me being raised by two crazy hippie parents who were way into nutrition. I have to say they taught me so much growing up and instilled in me great wisdom about the value of health and nutrition. My mom started her Shaklee business about 40 years ago now. She and my dad grew that business into a success of great proportions. Their success took them to Hawaii for a conference one year. While there, they fell in love and decided they had to move there! My dad ran a health food store, and my mom continued her thriving Shaklee business even in Hawaii. My foundations were set then. I grew up eating millet, brown rice, vegetables, tahini, seed cheese, no dairy or wheat, no meat until I was 8, etc. My mom grew her own wheatgrass and juiced almost daily. We ate amazingly healthy food. As a child, I didn't know any different. It wasn't until I got a bit older and we moved back to Florida from Hawaii that I realized that we ate differently, and I didn't like that very much because it wasn't very cool. But, the foundations were set, and I learned more than I realized.

As I sat and thought about it the other day, I feel like the very first moments of attraction to cooking and food took place when I was in 6th grade. My Nana Richardson sent me the little cookbooks you can pick up in the check-out lane at the grocery store. You know the ones I am talking about: "50 cookies in 5 minutes"or "Weeknight Meals in less than 30 minutes". :) I used to love to just sit and look at the recipes and pictures. I actually did some cooking even then. I used to get frozen pierogies from the store and cook them with sauteed onions. You remember that mom? Anyhow, my Grandma Sharlyn also sparked an interest in me for cooking as well during that same time frame. I visited her and my Grandpa Walt in Nebraska. She loved to cook and gave me a copy of the Smithfield Community Cookbook, which I still have. That was my first cookbook, and I treasured it. I decided then that I wanted to be a cook one day and make good food that my family would enjoy and love.

Fast forward through a lot of crazy years with moving and ups and downs in life to my college years at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. I received my A.A. from Gulf Coast Community College and then moved to Pensacola to finish my degree. My senior year was a memorable year. I lived with two fabulous girls that year, Amy and Letitia. We lived in a spacious 4 bedroom house with a great kitchen. My fondest memories of our cooking experiences there include our Black Beans & Rice night and then watching an episode of The Bachelor. :) Also, I imparted some of my first bits of knowledge about better eating on to my friends. I ate a lot of salads in school, and apparently, Amy didn't realize that salads could be made with lettuce other than iceburg. :) Green leaf lettuce became a staple vegetable on her grocery list after that. We enjoyed cooking and creating during that time, and I think it prepared us for feeding our husbands one day.

Matt and I got married June 21, 2003. I had a mammoth task ahead of me as I was going to try to fill the shoes of his mom who is a great cook. Matt and I had some food differences such as I didn't prefer red meat since I did not grow up eating it. That first year of marriage was a learning year for sure. I think back to some things I was so proud I had made...lame-o! Little by little though, I was learning and picking up knowledge of how to cook as I spent more and more time in my cookbooks and online. 

We moved to Connecticut in 2004, and I have to say that is where my LOVE for cooking and eating healthy really exploded. The first two years we were there, Matt attended Yale's physician assistant program while I worked. My habit became this: I would look up recipes on a few of my favorite sites and then I would come home from work and just create. I would take the framework of the original recipe and then "Summerize" it. :) One of the things I noticed in so many recipes, especially the "easy, 5 ingredients or less" types of recipes was that there was never any flare. So many recipes would use outrageous amounts of fat sources and no herbs or spices. I could not understand that. That is when I started experimenting with combining flavors and started to get a handle of melding flavors and allowing food to shine. Now, all this was done in the tiniest kitchen you can imagine, too. :) I had one countertop to use that was about 18-20 inches across, but somehow, I made it work. It was such an amazing time in our lives. We lived in a 425 sq. foot. apartment for two years. We then moved into an 880 sq. foot apartment, woo hoo! I had a bit more space in this kitchen but still a bit cramped. I finally landed a job at Yale. I had always hoped and prayed for a chance to work there, but I never thought it would happen as Yale is a union. If you are an external applicant, it's very difficult to even get an interview let alone a position. But, a precancerous mole and my natural ability to talk :) got me a position at Yale Surgical Dermatology. Upon checking out from my appointment that day, I was hired as a temp. by the office manager. My time at Surgical Derm. is and most likely will be some of my best working memories. The ladies and few gentlemen that I worked with there were amazing! I ended up becoming the cake lady while I worked there. I made a cake at the beginning of each month to celebrate the birthdays in the office that month. I really enjoyed doing that for everyone I worked with, and they were pleased that it wasn't the boring coconut cake each month that was purchased from university catering. We engaged in many talks about food and cooking and nutrition in that kitchen during lunchtime each day. Most days, someone would ask me what I had and how did I make it. It occurred to me even then that so many women are afraid of the kitchen and especially with experimenting. During those two years, I became even more adventurous in the kitchen, and I felt like I was actually creative. I have never been one to enjoy creative projects. But, I think during my time in my, though they were small, kitchens while living in Connecticut, I found that cooking is my outlet and a place where my mind runs free and allows me to be creative in so many ways.

Since moving back to my hometown of Panama City in late 2008, my husband and I have built a home and had a baby. Needless to say, my time in the kitchen has been slashed in the last year with the addition of our baby girl. I have gone through some times of wondering why I didn't feel myself, and then it would occur to me that I hadn't done the kind of cooking I am accustomed to. I still cook and prepare food for us each day and night; however, I haven't felt as creative nor had the time to really devote to creating and cooking. It has made me realize how being in my kitchen actually is a part of who I am as a woman, wife and mother. It is my domain, my sphere, and though my life has changed with my little shadow at my heels now, my life in front of my spices and stove have and will continue to ebb and flow with time.