about

Hi,

My name is Liza Agrba, and I write and photograph everything on this blog, which is brand new as of January 2023. Physically, it runs out of my home kitchen—the latest in a long series of Toronto-area rentals. Food and writing have long been among my preoccupying interests. This website is what happens when you hope your fixations might be useful to others.

I like brief ingredient lists, handy techniques, and flavour combinations that help food strike that elusive balance between effort and reward. That’s why simplicity is a guiding principle here (though not a hard rule). I don’t do complexity for its own sake—in cooking or anything else—but I will take an extra minute to swirl spaghetti into a neat little nest because I think we all deserve nice things.

Plants play a starring role in most of what I like to cook, but there’s no explicit focus on “healthy” recipes on this blog. I’m not convinced there’s a stable definition for that anyway, and if you’re cooking for yourself, you’re already ahead of the game.

PS My name is pronounced Lee-za Ag-ruh-buh (with an emphasis on the first syllable in each). Every day, I attempt to claw my way further and further from the nightmarish attendance list roll calls of my childhood.