about

by sj

a modern [food obsessed] diy life.

This is a blog (mostly) about food. Actual food, like stuff you wanna actually eat and is worth the time to make yourself. I consider “this is as good as a restaurant” to be an insult, and i don’t particularly enjoy buying anything premade, so you will find a huge array of recipes here for all levels of cooking skill and “homemadeness.”

I won’t bore you with tons of chatter about my personal life, if that’s your thing there are tons of sites out there to get your fix from, I’m here to offer you up the skills, knowledge, and recipes to make outstanding foods at home, to guide you along your journey to being the best you can be, and to have fun creating insanely delicious foods in the process. There will be other stuff besides food; cleaning products, body care, gardening…..but this is primarily about the food, how we nourish ourselves, how we communicate with each other through flavour, how we connect over meals. The other stuff is just handy dandy icing on the delicious cake of noms.

I’ll explain in the posts why we’re using key ingredients, so that YOU know why they are there and can eventually learn how to substitute for what you have available to you, or how to change the recipe in a predictable way to get your very own version of the dish. Understanding your ingredients and flavors is the MOST IMPORTANT part of learning to cook and to cook well. Always taste everything, pay attention to how certain ingredients interact with each other, feel the textures in your mouth, and don’t be afraid to play around and experiment! Cuisine is not a static art or craft, it is ever evolving, be a part of that evolution.

Let’s take a moment to talk about “authenticity” in food, to me, authenticity is understanding the basic concepts of a cuisine/culinary style, it’s flavours, it’s textures, it’s cooking methods….THOSE are what are important to get a truly “authentic” dish. Knowing and understanding these concepts (which you’ll gather as you progress) allows you more leeway in fusing cuisines together, creating authentic tasting dishes with ingredients outside the normal range of the cuisine, and just being a better cook in general. You’ll find recipes on here using all sorts of non-traditional ingredients, and that’s how i like it, those unexpected twists and changes are what further advance and elevate food.

I am lacto-ovo vegetarian (i eat eggs and dairy) with a focus on plant-based foods. Most of the recipes you’ll find here will be vegan or easily converted to vegan, that choice is totally yours. I promise that every single recipe on here will be packed full of flavour, you can easily serve these up to anyone at anytime and not have them say with disappointment “oh, this is vegetarian/vegan” that does nothing to further plant-based cuisine when it “tastes like it.” The food presented here is good food, plain and simple, it doesn’t need the extraneous labels, though i’ve provided them on recipes for easier searching on your part. It’s also why i don’t refer to this as a vegetarian/vegan site, instead i prefer “modern” as i feel the use of animal products is becoming more and more outdated as time goes on and it’s one tradition i am happy to see pass.

Further down the line, i hope to have some guest posts by people other than myself. We’ll see. In the meantime, you’re stuck with me, a food obsessed mad kitchen wizard with wild ideas and a crazy urge to eat a different thing every day. If you’re wondering why i feel worthy of even sharing these recipes with you, it’s because they’re good, i’m proud of them, i love love love to cook, it’s in my blood and heart, and on another note, i’ve been on this vegetarian path for almost three decades, i’ll eat just about anything that doesn’t have animal flesh, and i’m always reading about and buying new and strange ingredients to play with. So, let me be your culinary explorer and sort things out, and maybe someday you’ll surpass me and be teaching me instead. That would be amazing. Everything you find here, from the design, the recipes, the writing, the photos…. it’s all me, this is my baby, my life, my raison d’être, and all of my heart and soul. 

Now, stop reading all this nonsense and go make food!

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