About

As a baby, consuming food was not my favourite thing to do. I was labelled as someone who did not like to eat and was a picky eater. The truth is, I have a self-diagnosed avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), which is also known as selective eating disorder (SED). This means that I find it hard to try new foods and I can easily be put off certain foods based on their appearance, taste, smell, texture, et cetera. Quite a number of these foods are those that are consumed by the majority such as meats, cakes, chocolates, cookies and any food at a particular consistency. I even struggled with consuming breast milk.

Growing up, I went from being a rib-counting skinny child to being rather overweight due to the fact that alongside the ARFID, I ate in small quantities and was never hungry and therefore, I was, and still am, prone to skipping meals. Skipping meals and eating in small quantities resulted in my metabolism slowing down and fat being stored in my body longer than the average person as my body was in starvation mode.

My uncommon eating habits resulted in me having a very low immunity and getting sick easily.

At the age of 10, when I went vegetarian, I was forced to learn how to cook as the idea of consciously not cooking with meats was new to my mother. This led to me successfully and unsuccessfully experimenting with ingredients and was the spark that ignited my love for cooking.

Unfortunately, as vegetarianism was a new concept to me at the time, I did not know how to take charge of my own health and therefore, alongside being frequently ill, I became anaemic which affected my ability to focus and resulted in a lack of energy.

I tried to “detox” at least for a period of one week every year and increase my intake of greens, but those were just a short-term fix.

At 17 years old, I was browsing through YouTube when I came across a video by Kristina Carillo-Bucaram, also known as FullyRawKristina. In the video, she talked about healing herself through a raw vegan diet and at that moment, I decided to go raw vegan for two weeks as my annual detox.

My first few days as a raw vegan were hard as I had to keep my calorie count up, which meant I had to eat a lot of food. After struggling to eat a lot, I began to break my meals into many small meals during the day and eventually, after completing my detox, I began to consume at least one raw meal a day.

Through veganism, I was able to increase the amount of food I could consume at a time until I was able to eat in abundance. I felt more energised throughout the day and my ability to focus improved drastically.

Kristina’s videos alongside those by other YouTubers, such as Julia and Paul Tarbath (RawsomeHealthy) and Ellen Fisher (then, MangoIslandMamma) encouraged me to adopt a “let food be thy medicine” lifestyle which led to me beginning to heal my body through food in the ways possible.

In less than 6 months, I was able to cure myself of anaemia and boost my immunity to the point that the daily headaches I experienced and frequent visits to the doctor were just a memory.

Prior to my “detox” and adopting this new lifestyle I had developed a mild milk allergy (which worsened with time) leading to me adopting a more vegan lifestyle and eventually strictly preparing and cooking only vegan meals as I felt better after consuming them.

From watching many vegan food channels, I became inspired to try new dishes and even try to make vegan versions of meat/dairy-laden dishes. I haven’t always been successful, but every failure has encouraged me to try again until I have perfected a recipe.

Now, I am in my early 20s, I love to cook, it is almost impossible for me to stop eating, I am in charge of my health, I have increased the range of foods I can eat and I am happy.

I created this site as a platform to share my recipes with you as I get quite a lot of “recipe?” comments on my Instagram. I created it as a platform to introduce people to new dishes and to just have fun and be creative!

I hope you enjoy what I have to share with you  🙂

Let food be thy medicine!

– Samantha