So you get to know us better, photos from our silly adventures and mishaps.
Who am I?
This is Anna. I write about food and photograph our kitchen creations. I do all the research on stories and daydream about food. I grew up in New Zealand with my mum’s delicious home cooking.
I spent countless childhood hours at the Thai grocery store where she worked as her little assistant. Stocking fish sauce and Mama Tom Yum and INDOMIE Mi Goreng instant noodle packets was my first job at age 8. I worked alongside the fresh aromas of kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass in exchange for a bottle of soda. That’s where I honed my jasmine rice sniffing and soy sauce testing skills.
Meet my partner, Alex
Alex is a scientist. He finally got his Ph.D. in Physics in April 2019. He spends his time (when he’s not in the kitchen with me) as a research engineer and inventor, making things that he’s not allowed to tell me about.
He does literally all of the heavy lifting, carrying groceries and wielding heavy pots and pans. He grew up in Southern California cooking a lot with his parents who are Julia Child and Jacques Pépin fans. Customary gifts at Christmas always include a kitchen utensil or three.
It all started with a slice of cheesecake
On our first date, Alex and I shared a slice of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. On our third date, he grilled New Zealand lamb chops for me and made his family’s famous garlic lemon juice salad dressing. I knew then that he was a keeper!
We’re a strong partnership with complementary talents. Alex is the mad scientist (what happens when I microwave a hardboiled egg?), fearless and goofy.
I’m the over-optimizer (how can I cook all of this in one pot?), mischievous and adventurous. We’re both optimists with eyes bigger than our stomachs.
Nope, not professional chefs
We’re self-taught, home cooks with an eye towards easy-to-find ingredients and approachable recipes. We’re not experts. But we love to collect information from fellow food lovers and share it with you. We’re tinkerers in the kitchen. And while most of our recipes have plenty of garlic, it is not the only food we eat.
Alex’s favorite kitchen tool is a big chef’s knife. Mine is the garlic press.
We love food from different cultures. My favorite food is noodles. Stir-fried, soupy, saucy, no matter how you make it, I’ve never met a noodle I didn’t like. Alex loves dumplings. Though he will always stubbornly say he doesn’t have a favorite food, rather he loves variety.
While we eat everything (but Alex draws the line at chicken feet), we err on the side of less meat when possible (for the animals’ and environment’s sake) and lower carbs (because of my family history with diabetes). We have a lot of creative alternatives to noodles and not-so-sweet desserts.
But we’re not vegans or vegetarians, even if you find many vegan recipes on Garlic Delight. We believe in balance and a touch of chicken broth now and again.
We’re building a fun community, curious about food, and eager to improve our skills.
Food is a magical substance that brings people together. We want more of that magic in our lives. We’re trying to bring more of it to our neighborhood and community too. That includes our online community here at Garlic Delight.
I learned a lot while living in California about sustainable agriculture and farming practices, thanks to our privileged access to community-supported agriculture (CSAs).
Now we are on a mountain adventure living in Boulder, Colorado and cooking at high-altitude. It brings a lot of new challenges, especially around baking.
Garlic Delight is as much about demystifying food as it is about picking up skills, again not more information. To be clear, we’re no angels either. We don’t always eat organic or pasture-raised. We try to eat homemade meals for dinner and bring leftovers for lunch, but we eat out at restaurants on the weekends.
When we’re not hosting a dinner party…
When we’re not in the kitchen, you can find me at the swimming pool or biking around Boulder’s amazing trails with Alex. Maybe we’re up in Colorado’s beautiful mountains that remind me so much of New Zealand.
You can hang out with us in person at Financial Independence meetups. We co-host the ChooseFI Stanford meetup every month where we talk about money. (I have flown back to the Bay Area to attend the meetups occasionally.) We’re now organizing virtual meetups, which you can attend. I also cohost the NoCo Mustachian meetups in Boulder so you can join us for those in-person events if you like to talk about personal finance.
Tell us about yourself
Now that you’ve seen some pictures of our adventures, tell me about you. Send me an email at anna@garlicdelight.com. I’d love to hear what you’re cooking and food problems you are struggling with.