About
Claire
heyy girl, hey! 👋🏽
When you love family & food as much as I do, you find any & ev.er.y reason to put the two together, hello.
I’ve always loved eating good food. Then I learned how to preserve it & now I love that too.
But I didn’t grow up that way. I didn’t learn up underneath a Grandmama & no one passed down any family heirloom recipe cards to me either.
That’s all changed as I’ve grown into my own in my kitchen. And if any of this is YOU just know that it only takes 1 woman making 1 decision to change the trajectory of her family’s future.
Now becauseeeee I love the kitchen & all this as much as I do, I’ve split up my story into 3 juicy parts.
FUN FACT: All 3 of my kids were born at home, one in each month of winter (1st in Dec, 2nd in Jan, 3rd in Feb). And I took a cooking class in Italy with my husband on our 1yr wedding anniversary where I made pasta & prepared artichokes for the very first time!
FAQs
The blog is called Becoming Traditional because it’s the full, ongoing story of how my family is becoming more self-sufficient & living an old-fashioned life in a lot of ways. The name was chosen to encompass an expansion that may happen one day as we migrate from the kitchen into other parts of the home.
I’m a first-generation, self-taught kitcheneer & foodie! No one taught me how to preserve food in all the ways I learned after college. And I’m still finding my way around the kitchen.
Born & raised on the East Coast (Southern MD to be exact), I love seafood. And my dream is to have a ton of our favorites memorized so I can make them blindfolded. And to be that old lady who always has a fresh baked good too. 😎
Defffff not. I’m self-taught through countless hours on YouTube, trial & error in the kitchen, thousands of saved Pinterest pins & untold number of books from the library.
My sweet tooth is undisputed when I’m not too concerned about health. And if that’s the case, I love a few good scoops of walnutty-filled brownie mix. (I actually don’t care for the baked brownies as much as the raw mix. Judge me.) But when I do eat a brownie, it’s best topped with a cool scoop or two of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.
Comfort food is a heaping bowl of my homemade authentic baked mac & cheese. And I’m down for excellent sushi (raw & smoked/cooked) whenever the budget allows.
I wooed my husband with biscuits & bacon in college & we still enjoy that as a breakfast fave to this day (nearly 15 yrs later).
Vietnamese bun rieu is my favorite soup. Jamaican oxtails my favorite stew. Classic spaghetti with meat sauce or Mom’s meatloaf & mashed po-tates with peas & biscuits rounds out the savory in me.
Salsa & sweet chili sauce are two condiments that go well with just about everything. And I love a tall glass of cold raw milk. 🥰
My family is a huge part of me. And IRL, I keep a very small circle around me.
But for the privacy of my husband & children (we have 3, 3 & under!), you will not see their faces on the blog.
They are represented in our stories, our recipes & the pictures of the foods we make. ❤️
A taste memory: a stand-out, sometimes life-changing, food moment seasoned with love
CLAIRE’S TASTE MEMORIES
1
Biting into my first slice of baklava & experiencing the airy, flakiness of the phyllo dough melt in my mouth as it left me dazzled with the stickiness of the honey. The soft crunch of pistachios taking it over the top. 🤌🏽
2
Sharing some broiled scallops with my best friend & marveling at their juiciness & the clean, fresh yet slightly sweet taste of the sea. 😍
3
Exploring the city like a tourist & having some of the infamous Ben’s Chili over a half-smoke on H Street in DC. The saltiness of the smoke mixed with the spicy chili…served on that toasted bun with alllllll the onions was unforgettable. 👌🏽
4
Big family gatherings where all the favorites are served up. I love everything about those times from the rush of preparing it all to the sitting around keke’in to the leftovers the next couple days. ❤️