I created this space to share with you pieces of my world from cooking to nesting to wanderlusting.
My recipes come from what I am craving and how Paul {my hubby} and I enjoy to eat. We really do eat everything I make, except maybe all of the baking some of that I have to take to friends & family for obvious {ahem waist growing} reasons. And my ramblings well they are my personal journey though life; stories, lessons, & the odd (but important enough to write) rant.
my recipes are meant to be rustic, imperfect & used in their entirety or as a guideline for you to create your own kitchen magic . I hope you enjoy them as much as I {we} do.
My story…
My name is Lyndsey, born in Alberta, Canada. I have a deep love for the countryside, my most fond and favourite memories are the time I spent growing up on my grandparents farm, gopher hunting and pea picking with my Grandpa and potato washing and pie baking with my Grandma. Needless to say my dream is a small A-frame cottage on some land, tucked away on a side road, with a gas stove, wood fireplace, french doors, a herb & veggie patch, brick and mortar walls, wooden beams, a claw foot tub to soak into after a long afternoon in the kitchen and tall trees with a small orchard…on the west coast.
As much Albertan that is in me, a whole lot more west coast streams through. My family moved to BC when I was 10 so over my 30 years I have spent double my time here in the most picturesque of land. My love for the ocean and tall trees grows more each day and I couldn’t picture myself living anywhere else. This is home, home sweet home. Plus there was a boy here and love changes all perspectives, it opens your eyes and if here wasn’t home he most definitely is. He has made my heart a home and our home a heart.
I get my love for the kitchen from a lot of people, my Mom, my Dad, my Grandma my Aunts…I have had some pretty phenomenal influences that helped bring the love for food out in me. My Grandma was always beyond and above her time, style wise and cooking wise. She was stunning, absolutely gorgeous in her ever changing hats and peep toe kitten heels. Cooking Chinese food before it was even a takeout thing, baking cinnamon rolls, loafs of bread and buns that made the old farm house smell like a beautiful french bakery for miles and miles around. My Dad was the king of cultural influences; he loved spices and was always making us dinners from all over the world, from Thailand to Africa to India to Japan. My Mom took after my Grandma in the baking department, she can whip up a cake or the most divine loaf of pesto bread, warm and smeared with butter is one of my favourite indulgences.
So I was very lucky and if cooking wasn’t an innate skill in me I might start to wonder where I went wrong being surrounded by such culinarians. I am not a recipe follower, unless it is baking, even then I sometimes fidget here and there. My recipes here are meant to be a gateway for your taste buds, not taken too seriously or religiously, if you want to add more thyme or less cumin by all means make it your own that is all I truly wish.
My food philosophy is pretty simple; seasonal, wholesome, real, and natural, from local farms as much as possible. The one area I don’t budge in is meat and eggs; they must be local, hormone free, grass-fed small {&happy} farm like raised. We have an amazing butcher around the corner from our house who simply has the most divine meats around. Lucky doesn’t cut it, that pun might have been intended (I also got my corny sense of humour from my Dad and my sarcastic wit from my Mom, it’s that kind of combo). We are also surrounded by fresh eggs on almost every block {we live close to the country} and in the summer time there are road side stands selling orchard apples, juicy berries, an abundance of garden veggies and fresh baked pies. Like I said the area we are in the pretty wonderful for the foodie in me.
During farmer’s market season I am there every Saturday, filling my basket with an abundant of fresh veggies, herbs, wildflowers, honey, and berries. In the off season some of my favourite road side stands stay open, otherwise I shop at the smaller local community oriented farm style grocery markets. Again I am very lucky for where I live and the seasonal goods that are produced. This all makes my time in the kitchen that much easier and inspiration for dishes flows from one season to the next.
My life changed in 2011 when my Dad much too suddenly was diagnosed with stage four cancer, passing away within two weeks, you can read a more in depth story here. It rocked and changed my world forever. And although his loss was 10,000 bricks landing on my heart, I grew and changed, I saw and became and started to go down a path towards becoming the woman I am today. I realized just how short life really is and how much I wanted to live through my dreams and not as much my stagnant office job reality. So here we are; I started this space online to share my story, which has evolved since the beginning and become so much more than a dream.
I have always had these dreams that take me far and wide; they expand and open me up to all these unseen places that are usually quite unrealistic for my talents. Yoga teacher, gym owner, psychologist, health coach, you name it I have thought of it. I think mostly because I have always been searching for my one true calling, the thing that lights me up and is my natural state. Which has been discovered to be this.
I recently realized what the innate creativity inside of me meant and where I truly shine. I like styling and food and design and photography.
My creativity shines in those elements; they are where my heart is completely content. When I am behind a lens in front of a styled recipe or room I have serious butterflies and pixie’sque dust floating in the air around me. It is comfort and ease, and intrinsically, back to it, “who I am” at the core.
That is what this space is about finding yourself, taking different paths and adventures until you land on the spot that brings out that light inside of you. If I learned one thing from my Dad’s passing it is this: life is short and unfair and argumentative and messy and confusing. But it is also absolutely beautiful and surprising {in all the good ways} and just like a warm hug it can lift you up and give you wings when you least except it. I am grateful for everything that has and hasn’t happened, for the choices and mistakes {even the ones to come} I have made for they have all lead me to the place that I am in now, the present moment. A place in this vast universe that is ours, that is the only place we truly have to live from, the present & the now.
I am a nester at heart, my home is my all and it is where you will find me when I am not behind the lens, roaming a farmers market in search of inspiration, styling a table, writing a story to share with you or walking one of the abundant west coast trails I am so gratefully surround by. I nest at home, I nest through my work and I nest when I travel; which I truly believe is the best way to travel, get to know the locals you won’t regret it and the stories you will come home with will fill your journal for years to come.
My Dad’s passing has also taught me to appreciate the little things, the moments in life that pass you by without a wink. I strive to see the winks, to see the essence in all my surroundings whether it be in the pie pastry I so lovingly knead with my hands, the flower petal I so precisely place on top of the cake, or the way my body feels in certain yoga poses. I choose to see depth and poetry and gratitude. That is my wish for you as well, mindful & present lives for all.
Lynds xx