Thank you for your questions via email, comments, and social media! Connecting & sharing with readers is one of my favorite things about blogging.
Here are some of the most frequently asked questions that I get about One Simple Feast.
Where did you learn to cook?
My parents primarily. I have this crazy ability to remember tastes and my first memories go wayyy back to when I was very young. Ridge thinks this is strange yet hilarious as I can tell you what we ate at a random restaurant 15 years ago. My parents are ridiculous cooks. My dad also has this odd taste bud memory thing I have going on. We can both taste something out and then go home and recreate it in about 5 minutes. We’d like to say…even better than what was served to us. I grew up eating some pretty wild things, a ton of seafood, a lot of ethnic stuff. My parents used to take me to this Pakistan restaurant in Bethesda when I was 4, 5 maybe? I remember eating everything.
Later on, I had a pseudo ‘aunt’ who I have very detailed memories of really cooking with one weekend when she came to visit. We were eating soft shell clams with the little tails attached out on the back patio picnic table. No one ate the tails so we went inside and made a broth based Rhode Island Clam Chowder that was outta this world good. I really started experimenting at that point. I was probably around 10 years old.
Later on, in college and in the decade after I really started cooking a lot for myself and our friends. Living in ski towns, there were always a lot of tired and hungry people around to feed! Now, I feed my family, friends and experiment mostly on Ridge. We cook a lot together and he has this great creativity that allows him to whip up some pretty interesting and tasty things for me when I need a break.
What is your food background?
I majored in Hotel, Restaurant, Tourism & Resort Management at the University of Denver and learned how to run restaurants, hotels, manage kitchens, resort operations etc. It was the business end of the industry.
When I was about 24, I commuted every day from Breckenridge to cooking school in Denver at Cook Street School of Culinary Arts. It was a very intensive program for professional chefs involving extensive travel to France & Italy cooking in some of their schools as well. It was intensely focused on the regional cuisine and wines of France and Italy. Most amazing thing I have ever done. I learned more than I could ever explain and it really helped me feel confident in my abilities and depth of knowledge. A once-in-a-lifetime experience I highly recommend to anyone with even the smallest interest in cooking. I am a completely different person & recipe creater because of that experience.
Can I use your photos & recipes on my blog or website?
Recipes – NO. At this time, I do not allow republication of my post or recipe text without prior consent. If people copy and paste my recipes and republish them onto their websites, it will negatively affect how One Simple Feast gets displayed in search results + there are some copyright issues if you do. If you have a specific inquiry about a recipe, please feel free to email me.
Photos – Yes please, with a few simple rules:
- Credit the photos with two links, one back to the recipe post and one back to onesimplefeast.com
- Email me and let me know. onesimplefeast (at) gmail (dot) com
What is your favorite type of food to make & do you follow a food regimen?
Ha. If only I could begin to answer. We don’t adhere to any type of diet or food regimen. I love vegetarian & vegan foods, love to grill, love all things ethnic, love meat, fish especially shellfish. I don’t ever limit myself but strive to use whole, fresh & local ingredients whenever possible. Sometimes that means local vegetables from my area or hand crafted pastas made with American grown grains or amazing New Zealand Lamb. I get really upset with people over-using & abusing the term LOCAL. I like to use the best ingredients available to me that I can and don’t limit myself to something grown or produced within a certain geographical area.
What do you cook for your own family?
We try really hard not to eat out much for dinner. I mean, we love great restaurants…more than love actually…but it’s very expensive and we feel like we really over did it in our twenties with going out all the time. We save great meals out for special times and for when we travel. Most nights, I cook for the kids and then once they go to bed, Ridge and I make our own dinner. We like things pretty spicy & exotic which is usually why the kids get their own dinner and frankly, that’s our time of the day to reconnect, talk about our day, drink an adult beverage and unwind. Our go-to dinners are usually burgers, rib eyes, salads we eat straight from 1 huge bowl, lasagnas, enchiladas or curry we can eat for days and lately ridge has been on the rice bowl train which is often his contribution when I don’t feel like cooking. Yeah, it happens every so often. When we go out, it’s often for Sushi.
Where do you do your grocery shopping?
I am a die hard Trader Joes girl for lots of things I cook with because of the prices and the uniqueness but end up at Safeway a lot too. I buy my steaks at Costco because of the consistent quality and taste. In my dreams where money is no object, I would be at Whole Foods every day but alas, I have no will power in there and can not go very often or I get in trouble. In the summers, we usually garden and grow vegetables as much as we can. It is tough though living in high altitude. Ridge and I also have a strong passion for Farmer’s markets and try to source a lot of our summer fruits and veggies there. California is awesome for this year-round which makes us feel very fortunate.
Where are your favorite places to Travel? You talk about travel a lot.
We are lucky to have friends and family from coast to coast. One of my best friends lives in NYC and we try to get out there a few times a year to indulge. We go back to Maryland at least twice a year for long trips and eat our share of seafood and beach food. We travel to Colorado alot to catch up with everyone there plus I have a new nephew in Steamboat to spoil. Now that we are Californians, we like to escape to San Fran every so often for a Chinatown & Ferry Building binge weekend. The last 2 years we have been very fortunate to tag along with our good friends to Hanalei, Kauai which has been an amazing experience for the whole family. We have aspirations for a trip oversees soon without the kids…have to wait & see how that one plays out.
Can I email you directly?
Sure! { onesimplefeast (at) gmail (dot) com }
Why isn’t your recipe working out for me?
Hard to say but I would love to help figure it out. The comments section is a great place to bring these questions up. Other readers may have the same problem, comment or suggestion so everyone benefits from your comments! Sometimes recipes might have typos or need clarification, so if you find something confusing, please leave a comment or shoot me an email { onesimplefeast (at) gmail (dot) com } so we can get it cleared up. I am not perfect when it comes to this so I encourage you to let me know if you see someone else hasn’t already. Thanks!
