I'm a home cook and baker. I learned my way around a kitchen and through a recipe from my grandma, my mom and my dad as a boy in Indiana. Meals were simple and down-to-earth but also hearty, filling and satisfying. As I grow, I carry their lessons and those experiences with me and continue to love any time I get to spend in the kitchen with foods new and familiar, a skill drill, or a challenging new recipe.

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I'm also fat. A word I constantly work (in myself and others) to separate from all the stigma and negativity attached to it by decades of media socialization. Being fat has colored every interaction I've ever had with food with guilt. Any time I engage with food, some part of me feels guilty for eating it, undeserving of enjoying it and like a failure for succumbing to it. 

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Now, in my mid-30s, I've been on a body re-sizing journey for more than a year and have lost some weight. It's a journey I chose for me, and not something I believe all fat people should strive for. Everyone's body is unique, and is their own. Surprisingly, however, a huge part of my journey is learning to love food. Savoring ingredient by ingredient and flavor by flavor, and separating and eliminating feelings of regret, guilt and shame from the cooking and eating experience. Detaching those ingrained negative responses is opening me up to a new kind of enjoyment of food, which in turn has changed the way I eat. 

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In that spirit of enjoyment and celebration of my culinary adventures, I'm sharing the recipes I find (and maybe a couple I create) with some commentary on how I made them, what I learned and encouragement for you to do it at home, too. Some of these recipes will be calorie-conscious "healthy" foods, some will be cake. Food is food, and the joy of it is in the making and the eating.