About Me

Hi. My name is Susan. I am a self-taught cook and foodie. Everything I cook is from books, online, what my parents pointed out to me and in some cases, reverse engineering what I have eaten. Actually, I did take a few mandatory home economic food courses in Junior High and paid for a food safe course one time in high school ages ago. Decades ago! Speaking of formal training, I may not have any in cooking but I do have 8 years of post-secondary education and a Masters Degree. Ironically, I am known more for my cooking and baking skills than I am for the technical, analytical, and design skills I obtained from school. Not sure how I feel about that. Sometimes it's as though I have two identities :)

After becoming a mom in 2008, I worked less and less and eventually left my career behind in 2013 to focus on my family when we moved to the USA. I had a daughter in 2015 and motherhood and cooking only got busier. As the House CEO, life with my family got busier.

My husband is my dishwasher, food critic, pace buddy (we're long distance runners), and best friend! He's French from the South of France and my Teochew family, originally from Vietnam and China, lives nearby in Victoria. Needless to say I have a lot of Chinese, Vietnamese, and French influences in my cooking :) After getting married in 2001, I lived in Paris for a couple of years. I was a stay-at-home wife for awhile with nothing much more than cooking and shopping to keep me busy. No one wanted to hire me unless I was fluent in French. As sad as that may sound, it actually gave me the opportunity to hang out a lot in supermarkets and cook for hours at a time and I learned so much. I had all the time in the world. These days I pretty much cook anything and everything. The truth is I love cooking as much as I love to eat great food. I think if you are passionate about something, it just becomes easy to you. A chef friend of mine, who I met in Paris, once told me that cooking is art and science together. And of course, the nerd and designer in me was delighted :)


We eat at home often but I also love dining out and trying new foods. Since living in France, I have a great appreciation for food presentation. I also love taking my time to enjoy food and drinking wine. I still believe taste is the most important part of a dish but I understand that there are other important factors that also contribute to the overall dining experience. Since becoming a mother, I have started to bake more. Like 100 times more! Holy cow. I mean I already knew how to bake quite a few things very well like cheesecake, chocolate cake, lemon tart, brownies, and bars. There wasn't a lot of variation though and I would tend to make the same thing over and over. Also, my baking barely ever involved any decorating at all. I just cared about how it tasted. Now I care about how it looks either just as much or even more than how it tastes. Seeing all the beautiful food images in books and on social media has made me envious of other people's food styling skills. I honestly think Twitter and Pinterest pushed me to decorate more. After all, my followers can only see what I make. If only there was a way to share flavours over the Internet too... :)

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