Hi there, thank you for checking out my food blog!

Here’s a little background on my relationship with food and why I want to share what I share here…

I was raised up growing our own vegetables and fruits and a dozen or two of poultry and fowls on my parent’s property back in Ontario. I think it’s because of that and being Chinese*, that I have fond memories of food and what I consider a fairly healthy relationship to it.

My father is an entomologist (a specialist that studied insects and pest control), he believed in non-chemical pest control when it was possible. In the latter years of his career, he worked with the United Nations in Africa to help famine stricken areas with crop production and protection. After taking early retirement to help raise my sister and I, he bought a farm, and thus my relationship with crops and livestock was reignited.

From a young age of 4, I have memories of seeding fields, stomping on grapes inside a rubbermaid can as big as me to make wine, plucking fowls and gutting them, going to butcher houses, drinking fresh warm unpasteurized milk, and selling bunches of spinach on the front yard to neighbours and passing by folks. I understood the full process of growing and raising food, as well as the end of their life cycle to nourish ourselves. Granted, certain endings of animals did not go down well for me, such as rabbits, whom I thought were my pets. But I learned to have a great appreciation for what they provide and I respect their lives and being.

In my teenage years, at the second coming of being a farmer’s daughter, I stumbled upon observing the animals and photography. I wanted to document the creatures characters somehow, but it wasn’t until when I got my first digital camera in my late 20′s that the passion started to develop. I still think back to the days of when my dad had a vintage incubator, and how awesome it would have been to have that digital camera and if I had thought of it then to document the entire life cycle from hen to egg to hen to food. The excitement of holding an egg up to a light bulb and seeing a live being inside it, blood pumping always made me feel awe, and right now, I still do recalling the memory.

A few years back my partner-at-the-time and I experimented with renting a garden plot out in Richmond, in order to fill my need to grow things again, outside, not just inside our apartment (cherry tomatoes and herbs). It was a huge success on the most part, minus the somewhat loosing battle with slugs for the radishes. I documented that as much as I could. You can read about our veggie plot adventures here: La Dolce Vita.

I’m am after all a scientist’s daughter as well, so it explains my endless fascination with studying and analyzing things, right down to the simple beauty of a fruit and it’s skin prlooking at it differently than the average person would perhaps. I’m so grateful that I can document and share what I love now, with all of you.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions as I let this food blog develop organically, seeing where it takes me. It’s been a rewarding journey thus far. Those of you who have commented here or via my photos on Flickr have inspired and supported me to be better at it each time. Thank you.

May you eat well and love lots,

Kai xo

p.s. A big thank you goes out to my ex, and good friend J. McKenzie, who helped to nourish my interests in photography and food, pitching in with the purchase of my beloved DSLR, which allowed my hidden passion to find it’s own way organically in becoming a conscious passion for me.

* Being Chinese, I was brought up with the  respect to not waste food, if we were to eat a chicken, we made use of all that we could of that chicken, waste not want not. Feathers were saved or given to those that wanted it, innards that could be eaten and or unlaid eggs still in the sack were eaten. Another thing with being Chinese, as with many older cultures, I was brought up feeling that food brings people together, understanding that food not only provides physical nourishment, but it provided intangible indirect social and emotional nourishment as well.

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