About

Author of Asian Test Kitchen at Kittea Cat Cafe

I would much rather be out and about like here at Kit-tea in San Francisco, where they serve 4 kinds of green tea alongside live cats.

I hate cooking at home.

I really do.

I don’t like the shopping for ingredients, making over leftovers, feeding a static audience, doing lots of unappealing prep work, using freezer technology rather than the freshest ingredients possible, dealing with a constant sink full of dirty dishes, and not getting paid to do it all.

I actually do like cooking but prefer to do it professionally, which I did for 10 years in all manner of restaurant kitchens including 2 and 3 Michelin starred ones and in 4 different countries.

Part of it was seeing the daily drudgery of my immigrant mom trying to figure out what to feed us kids of all of the time. There was no way my cheap ass dad was going to pay for a restaurant meal. That’s too expensive.

As a child, I always wondered what other foods tasted like besides what my mom made, Taco Bell, and McDonald’s.

As a an adult, I came to see cooking at home as a sign of being too poor to eat out. I vowed never to eat at home, ate most of my meals from restaurants, and traveled to over 30 countries just to see what other foods tasted like.

While eating my way through the culinary mecca of Barcelona, I received a message that my mom had terminal cancer and only 3 months to live. I fled home to California, and she died a month later, bedridden and speechless from the throat surgery that prolonged her life for a single month.

I had never bothered to ask for her recipes, and it was too late to get them.

So, this blog is an attempt to recreate and create recipes inspired by my mom, using whole grains, all natural ingredients, and mostly vegan recipes supplemented with fish and a few occasional meats. (Meat is expensive, and my dad is cheap, remember?)

With the proliferation of organic food, sustainable seafood, and pasture raised meats, you can actually make higher quality meals at home than you can get from a restaurant. The cost is too high for most restaurants to use those premium ingredients and sell dishes at a price people will pay for.

But you can make your own high quality meals at home, and it doesn’t have to be hard or require lots of ingredients, time, or dirty dishes.

Keep following for easy to make recipes inspired by my mom’s home cooking.

I miss her so much.

Maybe these recipes will inspire you, just as much as my mom has inspired me.

Happy cooking,

♥ Deanna