I got it from my mama

I definitely got my cooking love from my mom! I grew up with her cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner. Getting take out or fast food was more of a treat than the norm. Growing up, I was bummed out about that but as an adult I’m grateful. I thought that my parents were being mean and uncool by not letting me get McDonald’s for dinner like the rest of my friends but man was I wrong.

As an adult, I look back at my friends from elementary school through high school and I’ve come to realize the correlation between mass consumption of fast food and obesity is so drastic! I do believe you should be able to live a healthy lifestyle where you can eat whatever you like but REMEMBER, everything is great in MODERATION! You can’t expect to eat fast food three times a day and stay fit unless you’re doing something unhealthy. If you eat in moderation and allow yourself a treat you’ll be on a better health path, I promise you.

These are the values my parents instilled in me and I plan to pass them along to my kids one day. It’s better to cook at home. I wholeheartedly believe that. You can control what ingredients go in your food and most importantly, the quality of those ingredients! Now I don’t believe that you need to cook fully organic but I do think when it comes to making choices you should choose organic meat products. After watching countless documentaries, I am sickened by the way our chicken, beef and pork is curated. I understand having to keep up with demand but if you can afford organic meat go with that. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with the cheaper option unless you take into account morals. My parents could not afford to buy organic everything when I was growing up and I don’t think it had a huge impact on my health.

My mom takes so much pride in the food she makes and you can taste it. She makes everything with so much love no matter how tired she is. At one point, she worked two jobs and still managed to cook every meal for my dad and I. I loved watching her make food and would pick up recipies just by watching her make certain meals over and over. I still have a hard time with certain traditional Romanian dishes but I got the basics down pretty well. That’s part of the reason why I decided to try cooking school. I was mad I didn’t pay more attention when my mom was cooking and I wanted to get as close to her level as possible. Of course I’ll never actually be able to cook like her when it comes to Romanian food but I come close and I’m very proud of that.

She taught me the important a of cooking your meals and cooking with love. It just makes everything taste BETTER! Also, because of her, I got into the awful habit of eyeing my ingredients when I cook. So if anyone ever asks me for a recipe I have to constantly remind myself to give exact measurements or else my recipe sound something like this: ” just add a little sugar and stir until the sauce turns brown then grab a handful of string beans and throw them in….” (People get so frustrated with me and for good reason) thanks mom! She is just as bad. I’ll call her to get a soup recipe and always have to ask her to try really hard to give me correct measurements and the steps in the right order. I guess the sign for being a great cook is you making food on auto pilot and she definitely does that.

I truly hope one day I’ll be more like her, not just from a cooking aspect but just as kind-hearted, easy going and loving as her. She is a true inspiration to me and more people should look at their parents positive traits than admiring some celebrity that most likely is faking their persona for the camera. Admire what you know not what you glorify. There’s a big difference.

xo,