Hi! I’m Becky,
and I’m so happy you’ve found my little blog! I’m assuming that if you’ve managed to find my blog and then continued to click on the “About Me” tab, that you won’t mind if I digress quite a bit and ramble just a little. This may very well turn out to be the longest blog post I ever write, and the hardest for me to write. I think it’s mostly because it’s automatically called “About Me” instead of “About ___insert some exotic food name I’ve only just heard of here___.”
Just like my blog, I consider myself just a little grand,
and here’s why I say that: It’s hard to call yourself a local when you’ve only lived in a place four years when most people’s families have lived here over a hundred.
I now live in the stunningly beautiful Moab, Utah, which is the county seat of Grand County Utah (named after the Colorado River, which used to be called the Grand River.) I’ve lived in Grand County going on four years now, but I’m still new here. There are some people whose families have lived here since the town was incorporated and they got a post office. I love it when family roots go that deep, (deeper than some of the canyons here!)
In some ways I am most happy to, and definitely do, fit right in.
With the endless hiking, and oh!, rock hounding!, and finding petroglyphs and pictographs. All of those activities are some of my favorites!
But there is one area in particular that I am not willing to fit in and accept:
I can’t accept the fact that you can’t find really, truly hand-rolled croissants with only high-fat butter in the butter slab, gibassier, pastéis, mille feuille, blackberry danishes, arepas, falafel in hand-made pita (I had to throw some savory ones in there).
Moab is a city where, 100 feet from your door, you can take a breathtaking hike that culminates at a stunning view of the Colorado River, or a 15 minute drive to a breathtaking hike that culminates with cresting a small mountain peak to a view of a field of wild irises.
But this is also the town of endless scones, muffins and whoopie pies, which, don’t get me wrong, have their moment (just one, one moment, not moments.) And I almost didn’t include that last little snippet, because I don’t want to criticize the local bakeries and cafés and restaurants. It’s tough to run a restaurant anywhere, but especially so in an isolated tourist town. There are many, many days where they are so swamped with one-time customers it’s no small feat that they not only keep up, but that they excel in service. There are also spells where there are so few customers that some restaurants choose to close for the off season. It truly is a service to this town to run or work in a business here. And a lot of people, you know, those whose roots run so much deeper than mine, have worked very hard to promote and regulate the tourist industry here. It’s one of the most beautiful spots on planet Earth, and people here want to share it, but they also take great care to preserve the landscape as well, after the guests have all gone home. Most of the businesses here do a great job of keeping the heritage and history preserved and maintained for residents and visitors alike. …But it’s just not a pastry town.
This aspect of the nature of this wild-west town, the limited choices of an isolated locale, is what led me to really delve into cooking.
(I’ll admit that I was pretty spoiled by living in Atlanta. I still remember it fondly as one of those perfect cities, perfectly balancing availability with affordability.)
We all know that the internet is full of recipes, tips, and tricks of the trade,
some for a fee (I once accidentally paid 45 bucks for a cooking app, but it actually turned out to be a really great one, that I’ve kept ever since. If you’re curious, it was the Pana Cooking app, which has now been purchased by the Food Network’s Food Kitchen app., so if I’ve piqued your interest on that one, you can’t have it, because it’s been absorbed by a bigger app *sad sigh*), but so many really great sites are absolutely free. Which is amazing! If you find a really great site that gives you recipes for free, you can: enjoy it for free, or buy things through amazon affiliate links to help support them, or buy a product at your local store that was one of their sponsors, or even support them through Patreon. I really love where we are with information sharing and perpetuating the ability to keep sharing these days. I love that so many people are willing to give out their grandma’s 100-year-old recipes. Here’s where I turn a little old-lady-ish on you (I’m only 42), but I am so awed at how it can all work, at how easy it is to connect and share. We can help out all of these free sites on whatever level we feel comfortable, even if it’s just leaving a positive comment or posting a picture of how yours turned out; that’s support too! If I use another site’s recipe or technique, [and let’s face it, all of my recipes at least start with someone else’s recipe, whether it’s my grandma or my mom or my mother-in-law (or someone else’s mother-in-law,) or at the very least, someone’s pastry pictured on Instagram,] mine will have step-by-step photos and tips or tricks that made it easier (or possible in a home kitchen) to get good results, and I will reference, reference, reference that person’s site or blog. There have been so many times that I have recommend by word of mouth really great websites or blogs or apps that I think will really answer someone’s specific cooking question, but this blog is also a great platform for that! Welcome to my recipe card box!
My goal for this blog is to sift through the chaff for you and leave you with what works, with the equipment you already have.
Also,
Cooking for oneself as much on a daily basis as possible is always better and gives you more control.
When you cook for yourself, you have that rare freedom to boost something’s nutrition a notch by, say, adding and extra clove or two (or six) of garlic if you’re needing help with lowering blood pressure, minimizing your risk early on of developing colorectal cancer if it runs in your family, or maintaining more regular blood glucose levels. Cooking for yourself can also help you to make sure you’re actually getting vegetables every day. Corn is not a vegetable in my house; it’s a delicious grass seed made extra delicious by adding either butter or lime juice. Potatoes are not vegetables in my house; they’re delicious starches, also made more delicious with butter. Tomatoes and cucumbers, though delicious as well, are also not vegetables in my house. Tomatoes are not only a fruit, but in the nightshade family of fruits as well, and so are enjoyed when in season, and with skins and seeds removed when we are eating them in any mass quantities, such as in sauces or soups. Vegetables, in my house, are leafy greens such as lettuce, spinach, kale, and cruciferous veggies such as broccoli and brussels sprouts, and alliums such asparagus, onions and garlic. When you cook at home, you have a far greater chance of getting these things into your diet every single day; and I fully plan to be able to cook the way that I cook until I am in my nineties. (Now that I have put that in writing, I am fully saying a prayer that God does not see the need to knock me from my soapbox. If I find the need to change my cooking style or alter what I insist my family eat each day and what I allow daily or weekly, you readers will be the first to know!)
My goal for this blog is to share what I’ve found out there that works, and to help you to know how to sift through all that content on the internet and filter out what just won’t work.
I also hope to help you recognize which kitchen gadgets you can still make a recipe without. I have made crumpets without a crumpet mold; I used wide-mouth Ball jar lids instead. Some gadgets really will make your life easier and will be worth finding precious storage space, but when something else you’ve already got in your cabinets works as well or even better, I’ll let you know. (And if one day my little blog becomes sponsored by Red Star Yeast or Ball Corporation (Ball jars), well that would just complete the dream!)
Okay, so living in Moab really got me into cooking, and cooking got me into blogging.
The following is the funny story of how I got to Moab.
I am mostly from the Atlanta area
(I was born in California, and grew up in NW Arkansas), then really grew up in the Atlanta area, having gone to middle school through college and entering the workforce there. I used to work in the film business; I wanted to be a writer, so I ended up in accounting.
(God bless America: the land of the pursuit of happiness with the ability to support that pursuit in ways you never even thought to dream of!) And accounting, as it turns out, really became a dream come true, because it landed me a job on Oahu for six months… And that’s where I met my now husband. I still chuckle about all of this.
For six months, I worked in a closet on Waikiki Beach,
(a very large closet, mind you) annexed from my boss’s office. My closet had no windows. Now here I am, in Oahu for the first time in my life, working ten hours each day, in a closet with no windows.
My boss was wonderful, and made sure we stuck to the ten-hour days, which is indeed really good for a feature film in the accounting or production office departments. I share this point, because I want to emphasize that we have to take the euphoria that we get, and this is often how dreams play out in real life, and I was still really glad to be there!
Just look!
While I was tracking sixth days and smoke adjustments for background performers, folding checks, and stuffing envelopes in a closet with no windows, my now-husband, Kevin, whom then I had not yet met, was across the island, lugging stadium truss, winches, and 500 pound spools of tech-12 (these are heavy gizmos, people) into the muddy, muddy depths of the jungle. He was going through his own euphoria.
At the very end of the shooting in Hawaii, the crew needed to travel to the Big Island…
with all the stadium truss, winches, and spools of tech-12… for 72 hours, only. So while my husband was wrapping gear on Oahu, shipping stuff and setting up all his heavy gizmos over the side of a massive waterfall on the Big Island, working those 72 hours straight, I was printing checks, stuffing envelopes, logging mailed checks (yup, I kept a list of every paycheck that went in the mail, a very important job actually), catching an Uber to the airport, driving out to the waterfall, and finding each crew member, most of whom I had still never met, to hand them paychecks as their hands were full and they were hanging from the sides of a waterfall. One really helpful gal in the visual effects department did help me out immensely and helped walkie people and find every last one of them, and it took right up until wrap time. At which time the VFX department stood around me discussing dinner plans, hopping into their cars, and heading out… forgetting to invite me I guess.
Once I made it to my hotel room and showered, etc., I debated just calling it a night as it was nearly 10 o’clock, but then I remembered that you take the euphoric moments that you get, and try not to waste them. I was on the Big Island for what may be the only time in my life.
So I just started walking down the pier, looking for someplace scenic to grab some dinner.
I ended up finding a really beautiful place… right on the water… …that couldn’t seat me anywhere but at the bar. So I had a cream of asparagus soup, (and I do not even remember what else, because that soup was so amazing,) at the bar, alone, happy as a clam.
Then in walked a group of people I had seen a dozen times, but could not quite place in which department they were, and as they waited out of the way for their table, which happened to be near the bar, I felt like I was staring a little too hard, and so decided I’d better smile. One of them recognized me as accounting, and it simultaneously clicked for me that it was the stunts department, and we all said hello. Then they invited me to their table.
I was already nearly finished with my dinner, but it was so nice, that I accepted and picked up my dishes and moved to their table with them.
We talked about how each of them got into stunts, and somehow ended up discussing surfing and likening it to rock climbing. (Kevin used to be very much into rock climbing, and super-funny-side-story, once took out a student loan, but instead of attending grad school, opened up a climbing shop and guide service in Maob in the nineties. Don’t do this at home. He was a finance major in undergrad, and it did end up working out for him, but your results may vary.)
Eventually one of the locations department assistants ended up joining the group. Pono is his name, and I don’t think he would mind being listed by name here; he’s so,… well,… very Hawaiian. He is ceaselessly kind and loves sharing the majesty of his home, and would give you the shirt off his back (if he were wearing one), and he happened to have grown up on the Big Island.
When Pono learned that this was my first time there and that I had to fly out at 10am the next morning to take paperwork back to the office, he insisted that he take me to some naturally heated warm pools that were very close by.
(Close by ended up being about a 30-40 minute drive through winding mangrove tunnels, at about 11pm.) The only takers on Pono’s personal, guided tour were Pono, me, and Kevin. After putting on our swimsuits, I drove, with Pono as navigator.
Once we drove through the mangrove tunnels on this beautifully flat, smooth dirt road that looked harder than concrete, we parked, and hiked along the lava-rock shore for about another 15 minutes. The whole thing was beautiful, the perfectly hollowed tunnels of mangroves, the calmingly- smooth dirt road, the jet-black lava rock path that softly crinkled under your flip flops, the brightness of the night. It was one of those bright nights where everything is perceptible and only slightly blued. That night seemed as clear as day.
Then we made it to the warm pools, and what did Pono do? Well, he was sleepy, so he hiked back to the car to nap in the back seat. Here is Kevin and me at the warm pools. This was decidedly not bad for a first date, planned or not. The pools were the perfect temperature too, just warm enough to be really hot right at first. They’re also inhabited by these tiny crabs that just nibble at any dead skin, the sensation almost making it feel like a jetted tub. It’s weird, but nice, and weird and nice; and I’m not a touch-any-bug kind of person, but this was just neat. As we giggled from the crabs, Kevin and I continue talking, and then, he asked me if I’d give him my foot, and I did. He gave me a foot massage, in the warm pools, on the Big Island. Let me just say, it was classy; it wasn’t ill-timed or too much. It told me that he wanted closeness, to touch me, but he wasn’t pushy or aggressive. It was nice.
He gave me a foot massage, and then we decided we really did need to hike back. Pono was sleeping in the car when we got there, and he stayed that way. As soon as we got into those mesmerizingly smooth, intertwining tunnels, Kevin fell right asleep, and I mean deeply asleep. As I drove through those gently winding turns, it hit me: this man in the passenger seat was exhausted, and I believe he had mentioned having been to the warm pools before and could attest to how unforgettable they are, but he went to the warm pools tonight, anyway. He went there to spend a moment to get to know me.
Later the next day, I may have maybe just a little used my payroll department privileges to check his age and make sure I had his phone number correctly. Don’t do this at home. It worked out quite nicely for me, but your results may vary. Kevin and I began talking regularly, and then once we were in the same city again, back home (for me) in Atlanta, he introduced me to his daughter. (This he did the day I asked him, “What’s wrong with you? I mean, why are you not married with three kids?” And please don’t immediately take offense at this; after all, Kevin was living proof that some really great people out there in their late forties are indeed, not married with three kids. And I am living proof that being the safe option can be pretty exciting!)
That December, Kevin asked me to go ahead and quit my job early and come to Moab for Christmas.
And I did, and have been here ever since.
I also got a beautiful stepdaughter out of the deal, and she is a big part of my cooking.
She’s an adventurous eater, having lived in Taiwan, Hawaii, and Canada by the age of seven. Her favorite vegetable is lettuce, but she really likes it when I pan roast almonds and put them on sautéed brussels sprouts, and she appreciates it when I zest some fresh turmeric root on the top of sautéed kale.
Here is one point about me: it is very easy at my house to cook adventurously and eat vegetables with breakfast and dinner every day, and I know it’s not the case for ever household. The only bit of parenting advice that I feel qualified to give in my short stint at parenting thus far is this: the only thing that a kid will definitely never eat is something that they are never given. (There, that will be the end of my eat-your-veggies-lecture on my pastry-heavy food blog.)
You’ve made it!
You’ve made it to the end of how I came to Moab, how Moab got me cooking, and how my family allows me to cook whatever I fancy. I hope you enjoy the site as I begin to build it into an archive of every meal I’ve ever successfully made.
Hoping you make every meal just a little grand with me,
Becky
