Welcome to our table! I’m Victoria, a chef and Cordon Bleu graduate with over 10 years’ experience working in a professional kitchen, a mother of two and a food enthusiast. My earliest childhood memories are centered around our family kitchen table where I made delicious homemade food with my mother and grandmother. I love relating to people on both a personal and a professional level through food. This is a lifetime adventure with ongoing discoveries that I am truly excited to share as I learn.
I have a great opportunity of combining what I learned from growing up in my Russian family with my professional experience from school and the workplace. After I married Tima, a computer systems engineer, our home became a common place for gatherings. I have created new recipes, catered to the needs of a variety of tasting palates and as a yearly challenge created a new birthday cake for every family member. Over the years, I have met people with different food allergies who asked me for recipe recommendations and suggestions. Many of those people became the inspiration for this blog.
Trevor was five years old and had more food allergies than we could count on our fingers. He grew up knowing that he could not enjoy the same food that his friends ate because of his severe allergic reactions, which led to very painful experiences in the ER. I made whole wheat tortillas from freshly milled flour for Trevor, who was able to eat whole wheat foods as long as it was made with organic wheat milled at home. As he was welcomed to our table with the other kids, amazement, disbelief, and tears filled his eyes and he asked his mom, “can I really eat this with the rest of the kids?” It was the first time that he ate what everyone else was eating and it meant the world to him.
Moments like this inspired me to provide the necessary recipes, tools, and knowledge for people like Trevor’s mom and a generation of kids who grow up alienated from the table because of certain food needs. Shouldn’t a kid with a gluten allergy be able to enjoy a birthday cake that tastes great, looks awesome and is good for them? We live in a world with so many varieties of grains, dairy alternatives, and sugar substitutes available to us. The real question is how do we put them together so that everyone can enjoy being at the table. I passionately believe you can be empowered to have someone over for dinner or for a cup of tea, or throw a party.
You can improve your kitchen skills, develop confidence in the kitchen, learn about new foods, find out amazing facts about food origins and their uses, and even impress your family and friends with nifty tips and tricks in the kitchen.
We are all about family, friends, and community. We are blessed with two adventurous kitchen-loving boys, Samuel and Caleb, a home in Colorado, and the passion of starting a food blog that brings you to our table. If you love healthy, homemade food, gluten-free and allergen-free versions of original recipes, or just want to improve your skills in the kitchen, then Welcome 2 our Table.
