My name is Ashly (Juskus) Yashchin. I am recently married, work full time and have lived in New York City for the last eight years. By day, I manage e-commerce operations for a wonderful women's fashion company that manufactures almost all of its products in California; by night, I am a healthy meal making machine, avid runner and active city dweller. I also clean my own apartment (leaving it often quite messy), don't have a doorman (but do have a dog), and love love love to travel.

 

I don't necessarily "have the time" to cook; but somehow, I find it. It's true I've always had a passion for food (so maybe my deck is a little more stacked) - but my journey of culinary exploration has been a long and evolving one.

 

The very first thing I remember making was meatballs with my grandma. Mine came out tiny and hard and hers were large, soft and juicy. From there I moved on to omelettes - walking around the house, taking family members' orders for what they wanted inside. My grandpa would put the "egg batter" into a pancake pourer for me, making it really really easy. When I moved in with my dad and step-mom at the age of seven, things were a little bit different. She always prepaired meals for us but they were what I like to call semi-homemade: things like Shake'n'Bake chicken, Hamburger Helper and Steakums. After-school snacks were Easy Mac and Pepsi - suburban gold. This is what happens when two parents work full time - it's the easiest and most cost-effective way to provide. My family loved us and was trying to do what's best. We all still have a lot to learn.

 

My mother moved to Arizona at around the same time. Within two years there, she got caught up in the Western wave of healthy eating and living. She began working for a vitamin company as a sales rep, and when I would go visit for months in the summertime, I would spend my days wandering around the Wild Oats and Whole Foods stores while she worked with their buyers. At night she would serve me baked yams and organic chicken, orange juice mixed with some green powder, fish oil pills and Tofutti cuties. My interest in nutrition was peaked.

 

I came home from that first trip, green powder in hand, ready to transform my family's health. At the now age of 9, my family didn't take me too seriously; and other than the whole wheat loaf of Arnold's bread they let me pick, they weren't willing to invest in my desires for "overpriced health food." To them, and to most still today, it's seen as a waste of money and not an investment in health. At that point in time, I don't think I knew the difference yet either.

 

 For the next few years I lived a tripple life of consumption. Every few months I would head to Arizona - my newfound health food Mecca - and enjoy things like sprouted Exekiel bread and smoothies. Every other weekend I would head to Grandma's and cook things like omelettes or my very perfected, home-made chocolate chip cookies. But most of the time I would live at home, eating the very processed prepaired foods that to me, and all my friends, were normal fare.

 

Trying to fit those foods into my then view of nutritious eating, led me to very synthetic, self-proclaimed healthy options like Diet Coke, Danon Light & Fit Yogurt, and Reduced Fat Oreos. Since these were bought for my step-moms' diet plan and not for me, I wasn't really allowed to eat them and eventually just opted for restricting calories altogether. I quickly found myself inpatient at an Eating Disorder Unit my Sophmore year of high school re-learning what healthy eating truly was. 

 

Despite spending two months in a hospital and four years with a follow up team of nutritionists and doctors; I still didn't learn how to really nourish my body. Much of this has to do with the politics of food and the influence of special interests and big business over the nutritional pyramid; which has been changed since my time in school but is still far from perfect. At that time I was eating with a system of dietary exchanges in which a Pepsi actually counted as a "starch."

 

When I got to college, I was finaly free and I began to expirement with new foods. After moving to Rome for a semester abroad, I fell in love with local eating and the slow food movement. I spent nearly every night cooking in this tiny pop-out kitchen with the simplest and tastiest ingredients Umbria had to offer. I also fell in love with wine. 

 

During my time abroad I travelled a lot and have since been to over 30 international cities and tried hundreds of local specialties. I love the role food plays in most countries other than ours. It's a community activity and both cooking and eating are acts of love and enjoyment.

 

I'm writing this blog not just as a creative outlet for myself, but as a means to hopefully inspire more people to "get back in the kitchen;" to fall in love with food and cooking and to respect their bodies and the planet by consuming truly healthy, local and whole foods in their natural state. The truth of the matter is, no matter how advanced technology gets, we will always be inextricably intertwined with food and agriculture. To eat food is to be human - so let's treat it with love.

 

Ashly