Welcome to Fed & Fancy!
For the past twelve years, I’ve been finding purpose and comfort in the kitchen.
It started in 2008, in my tiny, 1940s craftsman kitchen just on the outskirts of my hometown in Petaluma, CA. Days that were usually spent working 10-hour days as a hairdresser slowly turned to early evenings at home, enjoying a glass of red wine while rifling through Real Simple and Food Network magazines. Now, back in these days, said magazines were thrice as beefy as the advertisement-riddled glossy pages you’ll find today. They also used to contain recipes made with heart and intended for those committed to the slow food movement.
Farmers’ markets, seasonal cooking and eating, and slow-made food soon filled my cup in a way that I didn’t know I needed. Late nights for my then-early-20’s self were spent mastering the perfect oil temperature for frying Zeppoles and learning to roast a free-range duck that I had no intention of eating (but serving). Everything made sense when I was in the kitchen.
Fast forward to 2017 when I found myself living in Bend, OR, and pregnant with my first child. Becoming a mother has been everything in this life. However, immersing myself back into cooking, baking, cultivating, and developing allowed me to rediscover myself and remember who I was outside of somebody’s spouse or parent. It allowed me to be not my profession, not my age, not even my Enneagram type (for the record, it’s a two), but my fluid self.
For now, I’ll continue to share my culinary adventures, favorite recipes, what worked and what didn’t, kitchen tools that I can’t (and can) live without, and hopefully provide you with some of the comforts that cooking and slow food have brought to me. While many of my recipes stem from spontaneous inspiration and creativity derived from and insufficiently stocked kitchen, some of my recipes are adapted or inspired by other recipes, for which I will always pay homage.
So, I did what any Millennial would do—I started a blog. Well, technically speaking, my second home cooking blog. While I wish I had access to my 2008 food blog, The Accidental Chef, we’ll have to start again here. Many of you visiting my page have supported me throughout my various writing adventures, which more recently resurfaced when I launched Not Another Mom Blog in early 2019. Yet here we are in 2020, and I’ve chosen to no longer exploit the details of my motherhood struggles and simultaneously keep my photos and stories of my daughter private. (She might make a sporadic cameo; she does love to cook!) Thank you to all of you, you know who you are!
Virtual hugs,
Nancy