The first memory I have of a smell is when I was two or three. I remember my mom carrying me down a back alley and into a warehouse-like building. When we entered it smelled of herbs and spice, aromatics and earth. When I got older and we moved off my childhood farm I struggled with food allergies and overall discontent with the sterile box and bag chain food stores available in the city. Slowly things pieced together, I moved to Frostburg, MD (where I live now) and studied Ethnobotany (the relationship between human cultures and plants). After graduating from the Undergraduate program and taking on a self-prescribed local food challenge (eating 85% of my food from local farms and my own garden), I went back to the University and received an Interdisciplinary Masters of Education with a focus on business and biology.
I have spent the last three years working as the curator of the University Museum to save up and pursue my passion of local, seasonal, resilient food, so that I can share these otherwise hidden treasures with my community. Currently my evenings and weekends are spent enjoying the task of making handmade organic corn tortillas and selling them at a local farmers market.
In the future (after getting the market going) I hope to publish a cook book, expand my ability to process and preserve food using low impact/ low energy use methods, and hopefully return to school to continue my healing food journey and study Integrative Health and Nutrition with the intention of providing healing consultations to my community. I am truly grateful for the blessings of food that I have in my life and am excited to share what I have found with those that are interested.