Hey! I'm Rachel
For as long as I can know, I have been cooking. I started off at my toy kitchen making 'soup' out of crushed smarties and slowly was allowed into the actual kitchen. My very first memory of cooking scrambled eggs with steamed zucchini & tomatoes - honestly doesn't sound too bad and my Mom said it was surprisingly very good for a 5 year old! Since that day, I remember my parents let me loose in the kitchen and thank god they did because if it wasn't for the freedom I had in their kitchen, I wouldn't be the foodie I am today.
Food is a big thing in our household - at least after my sister and I claimed the kitchen and have shown my parents the fun in cooking. My parents, like most others, saw cooking as a necessity to eat food but I saw it as something fun! I used to spend my mornings as a kid watching the Food Network with my Mom and as soon as we saw a recipe where we had all the ingredients for, I would drag her to the kitchen and we would start cooking. I started to find inspiration for recipes everywhere and experimenting with my own dishes which is when I realized how passionate I was for cooking. I originally started a blog in 5th grade called 'Oh Boy This Girl Can Cook' - I know, super cheesy. After some weird looks from people about the title, I sadly deleted my blog of 5 recipes but my Mom to this day is in love with that name. Around the same time, I started to make YouTube recipe tutorials! In high school, I started up Rachel's Eats and it is still powering through to this day!
People honestly don't understand how much I like- no, LOVE to cook. It is my 'me time' and the point during the day where I get to relax. The kitchen is my creative place where I get to literally do whatever I want. In the kitchen, I love using whole foods. This means, using ingredients with the least amount of sugar, no hydrogenated oils, choosing the things that have little to none artificial flavorings and making things from scratch as much as possible. Things like stocks, salad dressings, soups, pasta sauce and everything in between is always and I mean always, made from scratch for me. My all time favorite thing to make is fresh tomato pasta sauce which I actually have a recipe for! You will never, ever find marinara sauce in my kitchen.
One thing that I hope you can get from this blog is not only gaining the confidence to get in the kitchen and start cooking, be hopefully see that cooking is really not that hard once you get the basics down. I actually did a presentation in my communications class freshman year showing how cooking is more cost efficient, healthier and some times, saves you time versus eating out. Being a college student, I know how busy it can get and cooking is not always a priority but I'm hoping to at least make the act of cooking more interesting to you! Whether you are a student, novice cook or all around foodie, I hope that this blog inspires you to cook and teaches you a few things!
Food is a big thing in our household - at least after my sister and I claimed the kitchen and have shown my parents the fun in cooking. My parents, like most others, saw cooking as a necessity to eat food but I saw it as something fun! I used to spend my mornings as a kid watching the Food Network with my Mom and as soon as we saw a recipe where we had all the ingredients for, I would drag her to the kitchen and we would start cooking. I started to find inspiration for recipes everywhere and experimenting with my own dishes which is when I realized how passionate I was for cooking. I originally started a blog in 5th grade called 'Oh Boy This Girl Can Cook' - I know, super cheesy. After some weird looks from people about the title, I sadly deleted my blog of 5 recipes but my Mom to this day is in love with that name. Around the same time, I started to make YouTube recipe tutorials! In high school, I started up Rachel's Eats and it is still powering through to this day!
People honestly don't understand how much I like- no, LOVE to cook. It is my 'me time' and the point during the day where I get to relax. The kitchen is my creative place where I get to literally do whatever I want. In the kitchen, I love using whole foods. This means, using ingredients with the least amount of sugar, no hydrogenated oils, choosing the things that have little to none artificial flavorings and making things from scratch as much as possible. Things like stocks, salad dressings, soups, pasta sauce and everything in between is always and I mean always, made from scratch for me. My all time favorite thing to make is fresh tomato pasta sauce which I actually have a recipe for! You will never, ever find marinara sauce in my kitchen.
One thing that I hope you can get from this blog is not only gaining the confidence to get in the kitchen and start cooking, be hopefully see that cooking is really not that hard once you get the basics down. I actually did a presentation in my communications class freshman year showing how cooking is more cost efficient, healthier and some times, saves you time versus eating out. Being a college student, I know how busy it can get and cooking is not always a priority but I'm hoping to at least make the act of cooking more interesting to you! Whether you are a student, novice cook or all around foodie, I hope that this blog inspires you to cook and teaches you a few things!
College Life
For the longest time ever, I wanted to be a chef, open my own restaurant, enter the catering business...basically end up in the food industry. That still is kind of true but when I came into college, I discovered a passion for a different field I wanted to pursue.
Currently, I am a second year at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Majoring in Statistics and Minoring in Data Science, Mathematics and Computer Science. Yes I know, very math-y. I honestly did not expect at all to go into this field. I entered college as a Business Major honestly because I didn't really know what I wanted to study. At the time, I knew I wanted to end up in the culinary field in the long run and thought that having a business background would be a good idea. It wasn't until I started taking the required statistics courses that I realized how much I liked it. Considering math was my hardest subject in high school and that I practically failed AP Statistics, I did not in a million years ever think I would be entering the STEM field.
But, things changed and I realized how much I love statistics (yes, big stats nerd over here). Teaching is another one of my big passions; I am currently a Workshop Facilitator for Statistics on campus which means that I am helping teach introductory statistics courses to students through organized sessions. I absolutely love to work with other students and help them learn material that I am super excited about. Seeing the 'Ah' moment light up on their face truly makes my day every time.
Other things I am involved in on campus is Alpha Kappa Psi, a co-ed Professional Business Fraternity which is where I have met some (okay all) of my closest friends. I am also part of a data journalism club called SPEC which focuses on building the data science community in slo and publishing original articles analyzing real data.
Currently, I am a second year at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Majoring in Statistics and Minoring in Data Science, Mathematics and Computer Science. Yes I know, very math-y. I honestly did not expect at all to go into this field. I entered college as a Business Major honestly because I didn't really know what I wanted to study. At the time, I knew I wanted to end up in the culinary field in the long run and thought that having a business background would be a good idea. It wasn't until I started taking the required statistics courses that I realized how much I liked it. Considering math was my hardest subject in high school and that I practically failed AP Statistics, I did not in a million years ever think I would be entering the STEM field.
But, things changed and I realized how much I love statistics (yes, big stats nerd over here). Teaching is another one of my big passions; I am currently a Workshop Facilitator for Statistics on campus which means that I am helping teach introductory statistics courses to students through organized sessions. I absolutely love to work with other students and help them learn material that I am super excited about. Seeing the 'Ah' moment light up on their face truly makes my day every time.
Other things I am involved in on campus is Alpha Kappa Psi, a co-ed Professional Business Fraternity which is where I have met some (okay all) of my closest friends. I am also part of a data journalism club called SPEC which focuses on building the data science community in slo and publishing original articles analyzing real data.
After College
After college, I am planning to get my Masters in Statistics and then most likely end up going down the data science field. I hope to always keep food in major aspect in my life and keep updating my blog!