For Kith & Kin.

"For friends and family." The meaning behind the name and the heart of why I love to cook. 

Because what better way is there to love the ones you love most than by thoughtfully preparing a meal, then sharing it around a table. To sit across from the candlelit faces of the people you are lucky enough to have in your life, all gathered together. To allow a conversation that would have been cut short all too quickly at a noisy restaurant to linger. To feel at home, no matter where you are.

Although the feeling of home is not easily manufactured, I have found that it is eagerly invited in with a healthy helping of Mom’s red rice and chicken, or a soul-warming bowl of Jok with lots of ginger and fish sauce just like Dad likes it, or maybe just a warm (slightly undercooked) chocolate chip cookie.

The desire to create treasured memories like these are what inspire me to continue cooking, eating, but most importantly, gathering people together.

My Story

While I am far cry from assigning the adjectives “master,” “top,” or “iron,” to my culinary epithet, I will admit that I have come a long way since the days of serving my poor, saint-of-a-mother mustard sandwiches. That’s right. Every Mother’s Day I would wake up early to scavenge for wildflowers – mostly smelly ones that left my fingers tacked in sticky residue – from the creek behind our house, before coming home to prepare my mom a break“feast” in bed. There was Yoplait with marshmallows, haphazardly chopped apple and banana with a sprinkling of chocolate chips, and the pièce de résistance? Plain white bread with French’s yellow mustard slathered on and cut diagonally (the only way to fancy-cut a sandwich when you’re 7 and trying to spoil your mama rotten). I would proudly stride into her room and present her breakfast with a delighted, Julia Child reminiscent, bon appétit! Now, my mom either has a staggeringly awful palate or she loves me very, very, very much, because she would eat every. last. bite. Like I said, Saint Dianne.

But my love for all things food only grew from there. I found that the kitchen was a place with magical powers. It could level the playing field by closing the gap between “grown up” and “kid” where, as long as you could busy yourself picking cilantro or pinching pleats in dumplings, anyone was allowed to play. Conversation flowed loosely and freely amidst the hectic backdrop of a busy kitchen. Hungry onlookers would jump up onto counters, letting their guards down. The kitchen soon became my favorite room, cooking my favorite hobby, and eating my life-long passion.

Cultivating that passion is what has finally brought me here. From coercing family and friends into sampling my offerings, to working as an assistant in a cooking school, to rolling out hundreds of pies at a specialty foods shop, then co-founding The Rooted Table dinner party series, and hosting lots of Friendsgivings in between…My dream is to continue spreading my love for food and people as fervently as my 7-year old self spread mustard on white bread. From my kith & kin, to yours.