Hello, Internet

Here is a bit about me and why I want to write this blog.

I Love To Cook

I’m a proficient home cook who loves food, which begat my love of cooking. I grew up in a gastronomic wonderland of Vietnamese cuisine. My mother, who is Vietnamese, is a fantastic home-cook as well. I would love to say that I learned everything at my mother’s elbow but alas…that is not how it happened. I learned how to cook after college, when I got my own place. I started with a 5 ingredient recipe book, its title now long forgotten. Now I troll the Internet and the bookstores for new and interesting sources of “good eats.”

So Why The Focus On Healthy Recipes?

My choice is arbitrary. I have a small passion for trying out new recipes and being that I want to maintain my girlish figure, I go for the ones that will keep me slim. I have also noticed that a lot of good-for-you recipes do not score high on taste. That’s no good (pun intended)! So what I want to do is share yummy, healthy meals and point out the recipes that bomb.

Where do my recipes come from? I use a mix of online/offline sources. I love Allrecipes.com and SparkRecipes.com. I get the daily recipe email from both sites. SparkRecipes.com is a sister site to SparkPeople.com, a great web site for people who want to live a healthier lifestyle. I also have ten cookbooks, eleven if I include the home-grown cookbook that I put together for my family and friends in 2007. I will tweak and substitute ingredients in recipes to suit my taste and my budget.


I Am On A Budget

Food is one of my expenses that I am trying to scale back. Ironically, good-for-you food, like fresh produce, whole grains, etc. is more expensive than “regular” food. One of my goals on this blog is to be able to marry healthy eating with a reasonable spending allowance. I regularly spend $35 a week on groceries—ouch! That is a lot. My goal is to keep to a weekly food budget of $25, keeping in mind that I live by myself. That averages to $3.70 per day. My eyes bug out a little bit when I see that, but I have faith.

And Finally, I have 1000+ Recipes

That is enough recipes for almost 2 ½ years. Or course, if I continue to live by myself, it will take me a lot longer than that to get through all of them. And the collection will keep growing… I have decided that I will make every single one of them. I want to taste these recipes and see if they are any good. And I want to tell the Internet all about it.

Now that I have told you why I want to write this blog…on with the show! I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do.