Hi my name is Crystal. I’m not a professional chef, but I love to eat good food. I haven’t always been a good cook, but I have been told that I’m a very good cook now. I have continually worked on improving my techniques and the flavour of the food that I cook.
I love experimenting with recipes to make them to suit our preferences. I remember some of my first cooking experiments happening with my grandma. When staying with her in the summer, I would read her cookbooks. If I found a recipe I thought sounded interesting, we would try making it. I remember trying to make ketchup, it tasted nothing like store bought so I didn’t really like it.
I started collecting cookbooks while in university and now probably have more than 750. When I have time, I enjoy finding an interesting sounding recipe, sourcing the ingredients and attempting to make it.
I am from the prairies of Canada and grew up eating mostly standard farm food – beef, chicken or pork, potatoes and boiled vegetables. We moved around western Canada and lived in a large Canadian city for more than 10 years, where we had access to a large variety of restaurants and ingredients for home cooking.
A couple years ago we were ready for a change. We moved from our large house in Canada that had what might almost be considered a chef’s kitchen to a small condo in Bangkok, Thailand with a tiny kitchen. This makes for a bit of a challenge when it comes to cooking amazing meals. The benefit of living in Bangkok, though, is access to world cuisine through the abundance of restaurants.