Illustrated life lessons from 18+ months of cooking experiments — Part 1.
About 1.5 years ago I graduated in IT and stepped out of my Italian comfort zone. I moved abroad to a land where, at first, it felt like the length of compounded words was inversely proportional to the warmth of people. I settled in a single apartment, gradually finding comfort in the quietness of my tiny kitchen. No messy flatmates, no parental unsolicited advice. It was my clear canvas, always available and ready to customize.
Through cooking I healed my homesickness, unleashed creativity, gained unprecedented freedom. Besides classic Italian recipes, I started to test unfamiliar ones every week. I grew interested in foreign food cultures (for us: basically anything featuring strong spices or far from a combination of tomato sauce, cheese and herbs).
Blessed with friends from different countries, I was lucky to get a genuine insight on traditional Indian, Turkish, Ukrainian delicacies. We organized “International dinners” that became everyone’s favorite meetups.
Months went by, as I passionately learned basic techniques, enjoyed trips to my local middle-eastern grocery, hung out at ethnic restaurants in the weekends. Researching online was extremely fun and addicting. In no time I had bookmarked dozens of recipes, discovering foodie blogs with amazing photos. I was quite pleased with the result of my dishes, which made me impatient to keep up the discovery (as well as to harass my social media contacts with unprofessional food pics).
I never really had to cook for myself before. (Try to keep an Italian mum, housewife even, from cooking for her family. Either of you will die in no time haha). But now I’m glad that browsing recipes — still pinning more than I can handle in a reasonable time-span, because aren’t those pics so inviting — picking fresh ingredients, transforming them… has become not only a pleasing self-care routine but above all, a concrete way to share love to the important people in my life.
It started with one new dessert per week. Sweets weekly: in short, Sweekly. That’s the name of my tiny corner on the Internet, you are welcome to check it out :)
The journey continues with more passion than ever. In 18 months I’ve learned so much about myself and the beautiful mess of life in my mid-20s, that I felt compelled to share my story in form of short life lessons with small illustrations (work in progress, part 2 is coming!). My hope is simply to inspire others to live life to the fullest — and create tasty meals for friends and loved ones. Did I spark your interest? I’d be glad to read your feedback!
