Food Is My
Love Language.

My great-grandmother was determined to feed me. I could tell her I wasn’t hungry or that I’d already eaten, and it didn’t make much difference. She would go to the kitchen and make me something anyway. She wasn't satisfied until she saw me eat.

There was still a language barrier, small talk was the limit. She didn’t have much money, and it wasn’t easy for her to get around. But she could feed me, and she made sure she did...always.

She died when I was nineteen, so this was part of my life well beyond those early childhood visits. We had a special bond.

I started cooking with my grandmother before I was five. By kindergarten I was watching cooking shows. I’ve been interested in food for about as long as I can remember.

I enjoy making things from scratch, playing with combinations of food and flavors, and learning about the foods of the world. I don't cook from recipes, I never have. Often, I don't have any idea of what I want to make, but start with an ingredient I want or need to use and work it out as I go.

I love cooking for people, especially when it’s something they haven’t had before. I get to introduce them to a different dish or combination of flavors, expand their horizons.

In college I often cooked for friends and even gave a few cooking demonstrations. Eventually a friend’s family asked me to cater a wedding reception. I agreed, even though I hadn’t cooked for that many people before.

That first job led to others. For almost two years I ran a small catering business alongside everything else I was doing. The events varied in size. I also cooked for larger gatherings, including events with a couple hundred people to feed.

There are a lot of moving pieces when you’re preparing that much food. I enjoyed coming up with menus and working out how to get everything ready for the people showing up to eat.

Years later I came up with the idea of running a pop-up restaurant in our driveway. I could make a menu around whatever food I wanted to try and invite people to come for dinner.

We ended up putting on six different events with completely different menus. Depending on the evening, somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred and fifty people came.

It was a lot of work to cook and serve that many people out of a temporary setup. But it was also fun to put together a meal that I might never have made if I were cooking for only a few people.

I still do most of the cooking at home. I make everything from ordinary weeknight dinners to food for large gatherings. I also like making condiments from scratch—salsas, pickles, hot sauces, mayonnaise, infused oils, all sorts of things. One of those experiments became my Love Potion fermented hot sauce project.

What I enjoy most is sharing the food. Sometimes that’s a crowd in the driveway. Most evenings, it’s just my family sitting down for dinner.