Hello, my name is Ankita and I am so happy you took the time to visit my blog. The thought of putting up a blog has been simmering away in the back burner for a while. Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened and put a halt to the world. I spent my quarantined time reflecting upon the things close to my heart and what matters to me the most. For me, food matters—a lot more than I believed to be. I believe the human body is a temple and the best form of worship is taking care of it through good wholesome food. That’s what I strive to put on the table everyday, food that not only nourishes our bodies but heals our souls too. My greatest critics as well as fans are my sons, whom I aspire to raise as not only good but ethical eaters. This leads me to point out my affinity towards gardening. I love to grow. Looking through my sons’ eyes, there is something magical about a seed surging it’s head through the tough soil into a sapling and with a little bit of love growing into something that can nourish you. I think my sons are salad eaters because of my garden. They have knelt down beside me, made their hands dirty, and tended to the garden since they were toddlers. I am a habitual photographer too, love capturing all the beauty around me as well as the food that I craft. This blog is a realization of my long cherished dream of piecing together the things that matter to me—food and writing about food.
I was born, raised and spent a bit of my adult life in the biggest metropolitan city in northeast India. Connected to the sub-continent by a mere thread of land, the northeast is a world apart from the rest of the country. The food of the region reflects a kinship with bordering Bhutan, China, and Myanmar. That combined with a greater influence of Indian cuisine has resulted in the unique gastronomy of the region.
Our lives are formed by memories and when I moved to Phoenix, Arizona some 17 years ago, I had brought with me potfuls of food memories and zero kitchen skills. Removed from the familiar platefuls of hugs from my mom/dad, grandma/grandpa, and aunts/uncles, I sought out to connect and revive those platefuls in my own way, in my own kitchen, in a new place I have started calling home. My kitchen soon became my solace as it started filling up with familiar sights and smells of my childhood, as I learned to cook and recreate the food that I grew up eating.
My gastronomic awakening to the world of international cuisine was restaurant led. Landing in America meant landing in a food landscape that is an amalgamation of the food and culture of all the people that had reached its shores. For someone who has always been interested in the otherness of things, I embraced all the food of the world and in turn became aware of the culture of the people behind it. Food is intrinsically related to the social history of its people. What we eat is indisputably the history of how we live and who we are. And my food story can be summed up in these words, “something old, something borrowed and something new”. Something old relates to the food I grew up with, something borrowed is the food from other cultures that continually finds its place at our family’s table, something new is the food that I have curated over the years, combining the old and the borrowed. So if you are looking for a blog to find recipes of food from around the world including recipes that highlight my ethnicity, this is the place to be. Welcome to my kitchen and my table!