This website was born out of a desire to turn my kitchen pursuits into an outward-facing project. My happiest memories are connected to food – baking with my mother, holiday meals with friends and family, trying new and different dishes in my travels, and embarking on multi-day cooking escapades with my husband.
I’ve had the incredible opportunity to live in and travel to many different places, but moving around so much did make me feel like an outsider at times. Even “home” didn’t have roots, as my parents were themselves midwestern transplants, German and Eastern European stock grafted to a predominantly Irish/Italian Catholic city in central New York, where many of our neighbors and classmates had lived for several generations. In my memories of all these places, food figures prominently. Cooking my mother’s recipes anchored me to my past, trying local dishes made me feel more connected to my present, and talking to new friends about what they eat and why opened up the relationships that became my future. It took me a long time, but I finally realize that food is what makes me feel connected.
An additional goal of this site is to explore our family’s food traditions. I learned about my family heritage through a combination of DNA tests and my mother’s recipes. She passed away in 2012, and never gave me much information beyond the fact that her family was German – which along with my father’s 50/50 German/British background, led me to believe I was basically, well, German. I did the DNA tests (yes, multiple – for science!) and was surprised to see a very high proportion of my ancestry attributed to Eastern Europe, particularly Slovakia and Poland. During a deep dive into the family tree, I also discovered the presumed German branch (Malin) had changed their surname from the original Malinowski. Mom’s recipes now made more sense – her “nut and poppyseed rolls” were Slovak orechovník and makovník, the “jam-filled cookies” were Polish kolacky, and the potato pancakes we made with leftover oil were zemiakové placky, not latkes!
My husband’s family is from Oman, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, and cooking with him has opened my eyes to a rich gastronomy I would otherwise never have had the opportunity to explore firsthand. Almost everything I know about cooking meat and seafood is thanks to him. Our mutual love of all things gastronomic has truly been one of the strongest ties that binds us together.
Let’s see where this goes! Happy cooking and baking xoxo
About that title..
Yes, it’s a pun (sorry!). I chose it both to reflect my feelings on the role of food as a connecting force for humanity AND to honor my husband, who is quite the pun enthusiast. It is my life goal persuade him to enter the O. Henry pun-off (held annually in Austin, TX, where we lived for 10(!) years). Even our wedding “save the date” was a pun.
About Emily
I’m an enthusiastic home cook, baker, and eater. I read cookbooks like novels, cover-to-cover and usually multiple times. I like my cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing and have yet to meet a dumpling I didn’t love. When I’m not in the kitchen, I’m working toward a PhD in Epidemiology.