Welcome to my very first blog! Before we dive in, I have a confession: recipes and I don’t always see eye to eye. In fact, my eyes often skip over the recipes in the cookbooks I’ve lovingly collected over the years. But those cookbooks—and the meals inside them—aren’t about instructions. They’re about memories.

This blog isn’t just a collection of recipes; it’s a collection of moments. 

From the smell of my great-grandma’s famous sugar cookies, a tradition we’ve turned into a group effort by inviting friends over to help roll out and decorate them—because the recipe makes so much dough it would take forever to do alone. To the cool, tangy broth of Bun Cha on a Hanoi street corner, the only item on the menu at tiny shops. Its flavors are so simple and profound, we’ve spent years trying to recreate it—but some things just taste better on humid, bustling city streets. Convincing a local record store in Chicago to let us rent it out for a Dinner by the Decades New Year’s Eve party, making our friends help us carry all the food from our apartment to the store in the dead of winter. Or picking blueberries off the bush on quiet summer mornings, which has become like our own version of church—tranquil and so sweet.

These posts aren’t about perfect recipes, but the stories behind them. So, pull up a chair, stay awhile, and let’s savor these moments together—one story, and one bite, at a time.

Cheers! Jen