New Blog, Who Dis?
Hello! I’m Abby. I LOVE food. The best moments in my life are surrounded by good food. No matter what kind of crappy mood I’m in, eating good food instantly fixes everything. Even the thought of getting something delicious gets me excited. It’s a little ridiculous to admit, but I’m always thinking about my next good meal. Life is too short to eat crappy food.
I was born in Taiwan and moved to Canada with my family when I was little. Growing up, my mom did all the cooking even though she didn’t particularly love it. She’d make all our meals so that we could focus on our studies. She’d try different recipes that she gets from her friends or from old cookbooks. She was never too experimental with her cooking and she had a few recipes in her repertoire that she would constantly go back to. Although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, I find myself craving her food more and more now that I’m far away from home. My dad on the other hand loves to cook and experiment. Sometimes it works out well, other times…not so much…(psa: french fries should never go into a broth). For the majority of my childhood my dad lived in Taiwan to work and would visit a few times a year to Canada and vice versa we’d spend all our summers in Taiwan (with all the cheap amazing street food!).
It was because my mom did all the cooking when I was growing up, I never really learned how to cook for myself. When I moved out at 18 to attend university, my mom moved back to Taiwan – but not before she loaded up my meal card! For my first year at uni I ate in the dining halls. I was lucky that the University of Guelph actually had a really good hospitality program where we had access to beautiful freshly cooked meals daily. I don’t know what sparked my interest in cooking – maybe because I was sick of going out all the time or maybe it was because I had no other choice but to learn how to cook? Either way, I started off with simple basic recipes and the more I cooked, the more I realized that cooking wasn’t daunting at all. It was actually kind of fun and kind of empowering knowing that I could make really good food without having to go out and that I could have whatever I wanted at any time. I no longer had to wait until thanksgiving dinner to have stuffing, or pay $40 for a steak dinner – I could have it everyday if I wanted! The more I cooked, the more I wanted to experiment with more flavours.
Jump forward to present day. My partner Toby and I are veterinarians. We had been busting our asses all year working full time as new grads and we were finally meant some well-deserved time off. Our original plan was to quit our jobs before our wedding and move to his family farm, get married, travel for a few months, then move to the UK to work as vets there. 2020 was supposed to be our year! Sadly, because of COVID-19 we had to put all of our plans on hold. We still quit our jobs as planned and moved to the farm but had to postpone the wedding and travel plans. We decided to take some time off from work anyway as a mini holiday.
Living on the farm has been a refreshing change from the busy city life we were used to and it’s also been a great place to quarantine and wait out the worst of the pandemic. Thanks to Toby’s parents, the farm has fresh veggies, a stocked freezer, a great big kitchen and all the tools we could ever want (including a coveted stand mixer that I am in love with). Naturally, Toby and I found ourselves cooking everyday experimenting with different ingredients and recipes. We weren’t used to cooking for more than the two of us, so it was nice to be able to cook something new everyday with little to no leftovers (unfortunately for Toby’s parents for being our guinea pigs).
I decided to start this website because I was jealous of all the beautiful recipe websites out there. From my years of cooking, I’ve accumulated quite a few recipes and have made my own personal recipe blog in the past. Since I’ve got so much free time on my hands now in quarantine, I decided to try my hand at making my own recipe website – thus Polyphagic Abby was born! Together with Toby, we record our favourite recipes and post them here to share with friends, family and you! I’m all about bold flavours and everything delicious, no matter the cuisine. Follow me on this adventure as I cook my way through quarantine!
– Abby
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Polyphagic Abby 