Meet the Cook: Lisa

Say hello to Lisa from California!

Q. What are your favorite things to cook?
I love baking cookies/bars of all kinds but I also enjoy making all of the foods that my mother cooked for me.

Q. How/when did you learn to cook?
I learned to cook when I was a sophomore in college. My friends and I would get together every week and try out another one of my mom’s recipes.

Q. Tell us about some of your cooking triumphs.
I was so thrilled this past summer when I made a lemon meringue pie for the very first time. To my surprise and delight, everything came out just the way it should. My family devoured the entire pie in less than 24 hours.

My other cooking triumph was making bread rolls. It was so satisfying to be able to say that I could now make my own bread.

Q. What was your most memorable cooking tragedy?
My most memorable cooking tragedy happened recently. I copied down my mother’s pumpkin bread recipe but forgot to write in baking soda. The loaves came out incredibly dense and I was about to throw them out, until I tasted them. I realized they were breads no more, but instead, I had the densest, chewiest, most delicious pumpkin blondies I had ever eaten. The tragedy turned into an utter success.

Q. Describe your kitchen. Do you love it, hate it, and why?
Well, right now I’m living in a small apartment so my kitchen situation is less than ideal. But, the kitchen in my parents’ house,
however, is a dream come true. It’s everything I’d want my own kitchen to be someday.

Q. Is your pantry organized and are your kitchen drawers tidy? We need to know.
My pantry is fairly organized but it could be better. I wish I had a walk-in pantry.

Q. Do you have any favorite family cooking traditions?
Every Christmas we bake and decorate gingerbread men. We try to come up with a new theme every year and so far have done tourists, hula girls, and Sesame Street characters.

Then, on New Year’s Day, we’d go up to my grandparents’ house and my grandma would make all the traditional Japanese foods that are eaten on that day – ozoni soup, nishime, and maki sushi. I intend to carry on this tradition someday too.

Q. What is the one gadget (or ten) you couldn’t do without in your kitchen?
I don’t really own any kitchen gadgets (isn’t that sad) except for my can opener, does that count?

Q. If you had to take one food to a deserted island, what would it be?
It would probably be bread. I just love bread, sometimes even more than sweets.

Q. What is your go-to comfort food?
My go-to comfort food is a bowl of miso soup with rice and an egg mixed in. What can I say, I’m an Asian girl to the core.

Some of Lisa’s recipes on Farm Bell Recipes include:

Pumpkin Loaves
Chocolate Chip Cookies

Find all of Lisa’s recipes and blogs posts here.

Lisa blogs at Sweet as Sugar Cookies.


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