Hello and welcome! I’m glad you stopped by. I’m Lori, and I am the “mutt” in Mutt & Chops.
I call myself a mutt because I was born in Brazil to a Brazilian mother and an American father, both of whom were descended from a whole mishmash of backgrounds themselves. My ancestry includes Scottish, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, as the most prevalent. I also grew up in a very multi-national environment. While in college in the US I met the love of my life, Steve, who is an American of German and Polish descent. What has all this meant to me? It means that I love cultural diversity, especially in foods.
My life has been a real adventure. My father’s career took us back and forth between Brazil and the US, I married at the tender age of 20 while still in college (somehow managing to graduate), Steve’s career took us from the Midwest to various locations in the Southwest, we raised two wonderful boys, all while I juggled an upwardly mobile corporate finance career. Whew…it’s exhausting just thinking about it! But as it was happening it was just my wonderful life. We raised our children and managed our careers. Two constants in that life were:
- prioritizing as much family time as possible, and
- a home cooked meal almost every night.
Then Steve had another career move. One that brought us back to the Phoenix area where our boys were born. Once again, I eagerly started a new job with a great company only to realize that this time, I did not feel the “fit.” So, I left that job. Unfortunately, the next two job moves ended the same way. I started to question what it was that I really wanted. I didn’t have a clue, so I took some time off to figure it out.
Remember that constant of a home cooked meal almost every night? Well, like many things in life, after several years of practice you tend to get better at it. And that inspires you to try more and more. Before I knew it, the mutt in me was shining through. I was cooking all kinds of food from many ethnic backgrounds, with increasingly successful results. And with the enthusiastic appreciation of family and friends. There were requests for recipes, and friends on social media suggesting a more dedicated forum for the subject. Hmmm…it occurred to me that I might know what I could do.
This blog is about a commitment to living happily, preparing food from as many non-processed ingredients as possible, in as many varieties and from as many ethnic backgrounds as I can execute, and then enjoying the results (both as the original dish and sometimes the re-purposed one after that). I invite you to poke around, comment and share your thoughts, and to come back again soon!
