Welcome and Hello

An introduction to me ❤

Hello! I am Christina! Located in California I have a deep passion for food. Growing up I was told “not every meal needs to be a party in your mouth”. To which I strongly disagreed with. My sisters and I were diagnosed with Celiacs Disease around the time I was in second grade and in 2002 this meant death to my little brain. “WHAT I can’t eat cake and pizza at birthday parties?!” “I can’t eat bread or noodles or cake or doughnuts or anything fun in the world??” These were the questions and realizations I had at this young age. And TBH it sucked. I’m not going to list out the foods we tried to make my sisters, and I feel better or to help us fit in at school. It was isolating and just flat out sad.

Every time I went out to eat my stomach would hurt, I would get aches and pains that I could not explain. We ate almost completely at home with mom and dad’s cooking, and mom and dad, I love you, but I am going to hold your hand when I say this, not every meal was a party in my mouth.

Maybe 40% were…… lots of the same, crock pot meals but never a good sandwich bread to have the pulled pork with. “Maybe a lettuce wrap” my parents would say to which I responded with🙄. . . .

To save you from the rest of the sob story we are going to jump to Senior in Highschool me. I was part time home schooled and decided that I was going to learn to cook. When the whole celiac thing happened, I was already making my own eggs, lunches, and helped with dinners. So being in the kitchen was not new to me. Both of my parents worked, and my older sisters had Volleyball practice that ran till 8 at night or something ridiculous like that, and me having done school from home and ran Cross Country after, I was the first one home at 5:00. If I wanted dinner, I had to make it. and I LOVED IT. I had so much freedom to make food that were filling to me. I wanted the noodles and tried to find the best kinds, I wanted to try new recipes!

I remember the first family sized meal I made was Spaghetti with ground turkey. TBH still a fan favorite. I had no idea how to sauté an onion or even correctly chop an onion at this point, but I had YouTube and my growling stomach and nose leading me the way. At this time, I was no Professional, but I made some pretty good food for a 17-year-old.

(skipping over college because who wants the memories… not me) 😒

By my senior year of college, I had truly fallen in LOVE with cooking. The year is 2020… I spent a lot of time at home with a LOT of people. I really embraced baking at this time. I solidified my pie crust this year, my churro obsession, cookies, stir-fries and burgers. This was actually the year I attempted to write a cookbook with no prior knowledge to what the heck goes into a cookbook.

I am now living in Sacramento with my partner Peter. I cook 99% of the meals at home and 2% of those (you can ask my partner) are “not as good as the last one”. Like I said before, I cook 100% gluten free, and I am celiac. I cook what I would consider as healthy and mindful meals that are not bland, boring, or tastes gluten free.

On this blog I hope to share with you my recent finds of good food created by others to whom I will give all the credit and praise because ya girl does NOT gate keep, my own personal creations and recipes, and maybe even a bit of the day in the life. I hope you find something in this you can relate to, laugh with, or learn from.

XXX Christina ❤