While I will proudly admit to being a foodie my entire life, my love affair with cuisine really began when I moved into my first apartment four years ago and subsequently got my first kitchen.

While I dabbled in cooking prior, I certainly wasn’t creating meals to share with friends or appetizer’s for a dinner party. But this new, fairly spacious kitchen meant freedom for experimentation and failure.

The first night in my new apartment, I cooked dinner for myself, my roommates, and a few other friends. This was my first time cooking an entire meal by myself, and it was my first time cooking for people outside of my family.

I made some sort of breaded salmon, roasted asparagus, and quinoa.

I was so proud of it that I sent the above photo to my parents. I still remember that warm feeling that filled my chest when a friend took a bite, looked me in the eyes and said, “Claire, this is really good.”

And with that little scrap of validation, my obsession began.

I followed recipes from cookbooks and Pinterest, creating slow cooker soups and mango salsa spring rolls with shrimp. I tried my hand at my classic family recipes, like fried eggplant and popcorn chicken. And once I felt more comfortable, I started to create my own recipes for things like maple bacon donuts and cheesy english muffins with tomato sauce and a runny fried egg.

Eventually, I moved out of that apartment and into an apartment by myself. This meant even more room for experimentation — I could try something new and fail without having to serve it to roommates, or even admit my fuck-ups to anyone.

However, I was also starting my graduate studies at the time, which meant less time for hobbies like cooking. I was lucky to be making enough money to afford the service HelloFresh in order to get my dinners. And while HelloFresh did take some of the creativity out of meal prep, I still found myself learning new techniques and tips every night and falling even more in love with the dance that is cooking.

There is so much I love about cooking. It combines so many of my interests in such perfect harmony.

There is a dance to cooking — the way the knife rocks back and forth while you chop veggies, the circular motion your arms make as you stir, the back-and-forth between the stove, and the sink, and the fridge, the gentle shake of your wrist as you season a dish.

There is an art to cooking — the way colors collide on a plate, the way a dish is plated and presented to an audience, the way flavors do or do not compliment each other in the same vein as paint on a canvas. I can use color theory and flavor profiles to create my dishes.

There is a science to cooking — the way temperature influences cook time, the way salt infuses into every morsel, the way fats and liquids do or don’t mix. I use (granted, very rudimentary) physics and chemistry to prepare food.

And, most importantly to me, there is an embodiment in cooking. As someone who struggles with depression and related dissociative issues, I have found cooking to be a very therapeutic form of mindful meditation. It engages all of my senses — touch, smell, taste, hearing, and sight — and therefore forces me to recognize my body and the present moment.

Taking that time for myself, especially at the end of the day, to use my creativity and my body has been so important to my mental health. With this blog, I want to share not only my love of food and the community it inspires, but to infuse a love of cooking into others as well.