Hi, friend. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m Sarah and I started this blog to share my love for creating food that connects people to place, planet, and others.
I started exploring food and cooking more seriously in college after traveling around the world and wanting to recreate some of the food I ate and the memories I made along the way. After college, I dove further into cooking while helping take care of my ill mother, trying to find recipes that would nourish her and taste delicious despite treatment altering her palate. She was the biggest supporter of my cooking and I feel her presence every time I’m in the kitchen.
Through cooking, I have learned so much about food: where it comes from, how it’s grown and produced, who has access, and why. As said by the late Anthony Bourdain, food is deeply political. By learning about food and our food systems, we come to see that current capitalist and neocolonial power structures determine how food is produced, who eats what, and how much. Western consumer culture and corporate farming have destroyed forests and other natural ecosystems, depleted the soil, and poisoned our waterways. Climate change poses an immense risk to our food systems and our very existence as we face food and water shortages around the world.
Despite the dire state of our planet, I believe that through food, we, as individuals, have the opportunity to make change one meal at a time. The recipes here will be plant-forward, local, seasonal, affordable, and as waste-free as possible with tips for how to do so. However, just as important as being good for the planet, is being delicious. I’m convinced that eating good food with good people can do more for our health than pretty much anything else. I hope that the food and stories that I share here are like a big hug. I hope they bring back memories of yesterday while reminding us of our responsibility to those tomorrow. I hope they ground you in place (kith) while showing you cuisines from around the world.
Finally, I hope that this blog challenges you to grow roots and deepen your kith by learning what grows nearby, by sharing food with neighbors, loved ones, strangers, by befriending your local farmers, by supporting mutual aid and helping those in your community. This is how we create change. This is how we heal. After all, we’re all we’ve got.
a few important acknowledgments:
I live, cook, and write this blog on land stolen from the Piscataway Conoy Tribe and the Piscataway Indian Nation. As we think about our relationship to place, land, and food, it is essential to remember and acknowledge the painful colonial past and present of the so-called United States and other settler-colonial countries. However, acknowledgment is just the beginning. It is important to support Indigenous organizations by donating your time and/or money, to support Indigenous-led movements and campaigns, and to commit to returning land. To learn more about whose land you’re on check out this website.
I love to cook foods from cultures all over the world. I approach these recipes and ingredients with the utmost respect. It is important to acknowledge that in no way do I claim that these cuisines are mine or that my recipes are in any way representative of culturally and traditionally important recipes. Colonialism has had a significant impact on food traditions around the world. Recipes belong to the people and cultures that have cooked them for generations. I will do my best to acknowledge the origins of recipes and celebrate and honor them in my cooking.
This is a diet culture-free zone. While I may discuss how certain foods provide specific types of nutrition or nourishment, I refuse to place value judgments on food as “good” or “bad”. Diet culture is everywhere and we have to fight it every day. I hope that this can be a place of respite in a world obsessed with Western standards of beauty and thinness, where you can see food as a way to nourish and care for yourself and the ones you love.