Author: ssuwm

My name is Stacey Stankowski and I am from Madison, Wisconsin. I’ve always enjoyed cooking and cooking and eating. I think the first thing I ever cooked was scrambled eggs when I was around 6 years old. My parents always thought it was very important for my sister, Sydney, and I to start developing life skills such as cooking, doing laundry, cleaning, etc. from a young age in order to gain independence. While my sister absolutely hated cooking, I rather enjoyed it. I used to watch a lot of cooking shows growing up such as Master Chef, Chopped, and Kitchen Nightmares just to name a few. I was inspired by the dishes the cooks would make on their shows and I would try to replicate them. As I got older and busier, I stopped cooking quite as often, but I still occasionally get bursts of inspiration.
When I cook, the dishes I make generally involve shrimp or chicken, pasta, and lots of veggies. The photo to left is a shrimp stir fry I made a couple months ago. I’m very bad at following recipes, which is probably why I’m awful at baking. Baking is a science that I have not yet mastered because my cooking style doesn’t involve a lot a measurements, which is essential in baking. Generally, I throw everything in a pan and dump seasonings in until the food tastes good, and no one has complained about it yet.
My mom’s side of the family gets together in Chicago every year for important holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter and have a potluck style dinner. Everyone is assigned a dish to bring. My favorite dish growing up at these dinners has always been collard greens. Something about the way my family prepares them makes them the perfect savory side dish. One year, a couple years ago, I noticed that no one had been assigned to make the collard greens and I was very disappointed. When I asked about it, I was told that if I really wanted greens, I would have to make them myself, a challenge I eagerly accepted. After getting the recipe (that I used as a loose guideline) from my aunt and receiving some guidance from my mother, I whipped up a kick ass pot of greens. My grandpa said that they might have been the best greens he’d ever had. From that day on, I have owned the title of the Greens Queen.
I haven’t always had a good relationship with food. In middle school, I struggled with self esteem and body image issues, despite being a lot thinner than I am today. I felt guilty after eating so I limited what I would eat and counted calories. After getting down to a decently unhealthy weight, my friends and family staged an intervention and I got help from a psychologist. Since then, I’ve changed my eating habits to focus on getting the nutrients I need and eating when I’m hungry. I’ve embraced the fact that I don’t have a thigh gap and never will, and I’m much more comfortable with myself.