Meet me

It has always been difficult for me to talk about myself. Describing who I am seems like a labyrinth. I don’t know where to start and what to say next. So let’s start from, where else, the beginning.

Well, I was born and raised in Florina, a small town in northern Greece where winter lasts almost half a year. I lived there until I was 18, and until then I was always around my mom’s kitchen. The moment she entered the kitchen I started following her. And this is how my love for cooking was born, because my love for food had started much earlier. You see I was the type of kid that my mom always used to say “Come on, stop eating everything”. I have never hear in my life the phrase “Eat something, you are way too thin”. Although, my grandmother thinks of me as a thin girl.

Ok, let’s get back to my mom’s kitchen. My mom as a working woman used to spend just a few hours at home but she always managed to transform the simpliest ingredients into a delicious dish. She was cooking in a clever way, with respect and love for the soil and what it had to offer. She loves seasonal cooking and her motto could not be anything else but “love food, hate waste”.

When I turned 18, I moved to another city to study (Economics – nothing close to cooking) and I did not come back home. I used to feel homesick but my biggest issue was the lack of my mom’s homemade cooking. And then I started cooking. And so far – now I am living in Thessaloniki – I have not stopped.

If you really want to know me have in mind the following: for me a good day includes smells from the kitchen and family & friends around the table. Smells will bring up beautiful memories from the past and family & friends will make new stories. This is the meaning of cooking for me, it has a beginning, middle and end.

In the beginning there are the ingredients. To make a delicious dish you have to use fresh produce in season ingredients, even for the simpliest one. A tomato salad will hardly be tasty in the winter, this dish should be made during summer. So, I always pay attention to what every season has to offer me and I am inspired by it. Thus, in my blog’s menu you will find my recipes by season.

In the middle you will find intuition. A good cook needs to know basic cooking techniques and recipes. An excellent cook, however, has to develop his own intuition in the kitchen, experiment and adapt. This is what you will see in my blog, my own journey towards becoming an excellent cook.

At the end there is the table. For me, the purpose of food is not only feeding the body but also nourishing the soul. Every dish, simple or complicated, must be accompanied by a beautiful tablecloth, fine dinnerware, some flowers and family & friends. You will also see this on the blog, through my photos that accompany each recipe.

More or less, this is me. A girl who cooks in her own way, being inspired by each season, in order to create delicious stories around the table.

I hope you like my recipes and to make you jump into the kitchen in order to  cook in your own way.

Love,

Teti