Hello! Natalia here...

Hi everyone!
Amy had invited me to join this foodie blog (flog?) and I tentatively joined. I say tentatively because I don't see myself as much of a foodie. I mean, I love food. But honestly, most of the time I don't like making it, unless I'm sure to get accolades! But I'm pretty good at it when I do it, so I guess that's something.

Now that I got that disclosure stuff out of the way:

Top culinary influences: Pictures in magazines, the desire to impress, celebrities with crazy particular diets (like macro or paleo)

Favorite cook books: Quinoa 365, The Kind Diet

Favorite 5 ingredients: chocolate chips, flax seed, olive oil, quinoa, garlic

Favorite 5 dishes: Nori Rolls, Gnocchi, Vegetarian Pizza with Mango, Pancakes, Chickpea Curry

How did you learn to cook?: I didn't! Ha. My parents didn't cook, I was raised on microwave burritos. So when I got engaged I decided I better learn how to do it (I was also a caregiver for an elderly woman and I made her dinners) so I started trying stuff out. I think my husband is fairly happy with it all so far. I guess that's my main motivator. 

Your week in cooking: So far this week I have made a tofu turkey with delicious herb stuffing, sweet potato casserole, sweet potato pie, corn bread, whole wheat bread, soup, carmelized green beans with shallots, portobello burgers... that's all I can remember so far. Wow. That list impresses me more than I thought it would.

Culinary fascination of the moment: Pies. So far this fall I've made a few pumpkins, a sweet potato and apple.

Culinary ambitions: I would really like to cook with more Japanese stuff like seitan and all their crazy spices, but they're hard to track down (and Indian spices too sometimes)

Top serving tips: Well, the thing that always ends up being the biggest problem for me is that not everything is ready at the same time, so I guess my biggest tip would be to check how long everything will take well in advance of the serving time so you know what order to do things in. That's a pretty basic one, but it's where I'm at!

Your dream kitchen: A kitchen with a Jarvis-like talking computer!!!