About

update: As of this fall (2013), the windy kitchen has moved to the slightly less windy and slightly warmer Los Angeles, CA! It is nice to have a kitchen with more storage space, a real oven and a more spacious fridge! The blog will probably remain focused on easy & fresh weeknight-type meals with the occasional more involved dishes. You can read a bit more about the move here. As you may have noticed, I have started running about a year ago, so feet-permitting I plan to continue posting race recaps as well!

the short version: I’m Andreea, a 20-something graduate student in Chicago. Tired of the campus cafeteria food, I’ve been on a quest for healthy packable lunch recipes, as well as finding time to cook more homemade dinners. This blog will be primarily focused on food (recipes, restaurant reviews), but occasionally I will share other updates from my life as well. Thanks for reading!

the longer version: I’ve been baking since I was little and the holidays were always a lot of fun because I would get to pick the pastries I wanted and bake them with my mom. Over the years, I became more independent in the kitchen and almost took over all the holiday baking, while my mom got to focus more on the rest of the meal.

I didn’t start cooking until later in high school and college, more out of necessity. At the beginning, most of my cooking was based on meat casseroles that I could just throw in the oven while working on my never-ending college problem sets. As you can imagine, this got pretty boring after a while, so I started searching for recipes online and expanding my cooking skills and recipe collection.

I have been thinking about starting a blog for a while now, but I just didn’t make the time for it. I’ve noticed that more often than not, I pick my recipes from cooking blogs since they come with pictures. How many times while following a recipe, have you said “I wonder if this is how it is supposed to look like”. I know I’ve done it many times 😉 This blog will help me keep track of the recipes and the modifications I make and it will also make it easier to share recipes with my sister and friends. Pictures are a valuable asset, especially when it comes to explaining recipes 😉

Why the windy kitchen you may ask? Well, I am currently living on the 26th floor of a high-rise very close to the lake, and lets just say it gets pretty windy outside my windows. So windy in fact that one of my windows bends under the force of the wind!

What should you expect to find on my blog? Lately, I’ve been focusing on finding good recipes for packable lunches, cooking some of the American traditional dishes (I’ve been making a few different chilis and pancakes and next up are mac and cheese, chocolate pies and maybe cheesecakes), dishes from other cuisines, and when I have some extra time tackle some exciting desserts (macarons and souflees next) and some time-consuming Romanian classics. Baking still remains my passion, but unfortunately I cannot eat pastries for every meal, well, at least not with the limited amount of time I have for exercise 🙂

If you’re still reading…I hope this blog will inspire you to cook more and maybe answer some of your food-related questions as well.

Happy cooking!