I have a food obsession and the funny part is I don’t enjoy eating. This is most likely because of my food allergies and years of associating food with pain.
Even still I pursued the lofty position of Chef. Went to school for it, got my degree and within a year of graduating my health started to fail me. I was later diagnosed with coeliac’s disease, this broke my heart but fostered a different approach to how I view food and how I expressed my love for it.
Time management, planning, and creating recipes became my mainstays to keep me connected to food and engaged with it. I find it incredibly satisfying to have a menu to work from and wish to share that with others.
I am originally from Massachusetts, USA. I have been living in Germany with my husband, Oliver and my dog, Bean for the last eight years.
Hobbies that I enjoy are, reading, video games and camping. One thing I always have on me is a book, the genre usually is fantasy or science fiction. There is also litrpg which combines gaming and storytelling, a person favorite because it combines two of my most favorite things.
More often than not I am the quiet type. Standardly, I do not speak unless spoken to or drunk. I can firmly say I never shut up when I am in my cups.
Food = Life
Why do you love food so much?
The reason is mostly down to basic survival. Knowing how to prepare a good meal can go a long way. For instance, I know a recipe for pine bark cookies, I think it is good to know what you can make with what is edible.
I also think that everyone should know what plants are poisonous and to be avoided. Plus, there is no greater joy than seeing everyone happily enjoying food you have prepared.
Do you have a specialty?
Kind of? I worked longest in these two areas, BBQ and Bistro.
BBQ totally taught me the joys of a giant grill, that you can smoke just about anything and the maniacal fun of running three stations at once on weekends.
The Bistro I worked in taught me, time management, lists like all of them, inventory, and sauces. Skills I learned in school help greatly with this job, my teacher often used non-recipes to see how we did with flavor profiles.
Why did you stop working with food even though you love it?
Simple answer is it became a sore spot for several years, I figured I could run from the harsh truth of my body hating food but my mind and heart adoring it.
I felt like all those years studying turned out to be a waste. I found my love of food manifesting in a few different ways from weekly menu planning to simple recipe gathering and research.
I would also stare at different food photos, more often than not this sparked that creative desire to create something wonderous.
Then I wanted to start making gluten-free recipes that taste like the real thing, now I want to share that with others who were diagnosed with celiac disease in their early adulthood or teenage years.