About Me

Let me start this off by saying I am not a trained chef, I’m a Structural Engineer with almost no prior experience in kitchens other then a job at a friends sea food restaurant when I was 16, and my girlfriend, Briana and I partner on a soy free adventure. Briana is a business development manager in the wedding and travel industry. We have never had any type of culinary training, and are most certainly not an experts. I am however, an individual that was diagnosed with a severe soy, peanut, tree nut, allergy at the age of 17, after already developing a taste for normally prepared foods for my entire childhood. And I was not going to let a soy allergy stop me from eating the foods I had come to know and love. 

While some may look at a soy allergy as curse, and at first I did too, I have come to learn that while it comes with its difficulties I truly believe I am better off today with a soy allergy than I would have been without it.

I learned of my soy allergy at the age of 17 while in high school, I didn’t know the first thing about cooking or allergies, but was told I needed avoid all things soy. So I did, I spent about 2 years in college dorms without a kitchen, eating strictly grilled chicken and salads in the dining hall, until one day I decide to meet with a campus nutritionist, and her advice to me was to mostly eat... grilled chicken and salad, as most other things in the dining hall we’re pre-prepared and they could not confirm the ingredients. 

Luckily for me, around this time Briana, who attended the same college as me, moved off campus into a house that had a kitchen.. if you can call it that. The kitchen was about 30 square feet, with the worlds smallest oven, about 2’ of room between the counter and the refrigerator door on the opposite wall and could barely fit the two of us cooking at the same time without constantly running into one another, but we did it, and this is where together we began to develop a skill for recreating our favorite recipes without soy with a baking sheet that was left by an old roommate and a $15 frying pan from Costco. 

Our recipes started off as simple as can be, and mostly stemmed from calling Briana’s grandma to ask for advice or for how to recreate things we had eaten at her house (on a college budget). One of the first meals we made was a simple pasta dish resembling a primavera containing frozen, microwaved vegetables, some chicken broth, an onion and a zucchini. With Briana’s grandma on speaker phone coaching us through the steps, we made a meal that was extremely simple, yet better than anything I had eaten in the college dining hall for the past two years.

Since then, we have discovered cooking with fresh ingredients. Even visiting local farms for fresh ingredients.

During our time cooking soy and nut free Briana was suffering from migraines. Her Doctor suggested organic meat and vegetables. And a low-fat Dairy free diet.

My Brother is allergic to Salmon. My cousin Emily is Gluten intolerant. We live on Long Beach Island and are all together most of the summer. We manage to make delicious dishes that everyone can enjoy.

What do we all have in common? We love to travel as a family to Walt Disney World and on The Disney Cruise Line! We can all eat delicious food without worrying about allergies. In between traveling I love to recreate the recipes I loved the most.

I approach cooking with an emphasis on family-style meals and the tastiest ways to eat healthy together! When not in my kitchen, I'm often traveling, surfing and in my home exploring the best food locations and recipes. My favorite food is anything shared with friends!

Food has a special ability to bring people together. I often find this in my own life, and I hope you will find that this online community feels just as welcoming as a real kitchen. For me, cooking together builds the best communities! Let's get cooking together!

I have been cooking for a long time, but that doesn't mean that you need a ton of cooking experience to follow my recipes. I work to make my recipes interesting for advanced cooks and still accessible for beginners. If you ever have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask by sending a message or posting a comment.