Hi! For those wondering, my real name isn't challahbackgurl, it's Kyra, and I grew up in a Kosher household. The word Kosher means eating foods that comply with Jewish dietary standards. There are many aspects of Kosher living and cooking, but the most basic component is not eating meat with dairy. Kosher standards go so much further than not just putting cheese on a burger. Since we can never mix meat with dairy, if we were making chicken, we couldn't use any dairy product with it, so no butter or milk. If we were making cheese pizza, we couldn’t put any meat on it, so no beef or pepperoni (we could never use pepperoni, we don't eat pig at all!). Not only can you not combine meat and dairy together, but you also have to wait a certain amount of time after consuming meat before you can eat dairy, six hours to be specific. So, if you had a burger for dinner around 6 pm, that means no milk in ice cream or butter in cookies for dessert, unless you waited until 12 AM to eat dessert! Moral of the story, I grew up very aware of eating because I was aware of food rules from a young age, simply because I had to be.
As I’ve gotten older, and no longer keep kosher exclusively, I am able to see the positive effect it has given me on substitutions in cooking and baking because it's made me very versatile in the kitchen. That being said, I have learned to balance making moderations with sticking to the classics in order to create a healthy and happy lifestyle, but it's taken me time to get here. Combining my kosher upbringing with my own food restrictions that I developed in college made me realize that people all over the world suffer from their own form of food rules. They don't have to exist within the confines of religion to be an issue in your life. When I realized the food rules that I had created through societal norms and social media influence, I knew I that I wasn't alone. I wanted to do something, not just for me, but for all the women out there who have a complicated relationship with food.
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I've always loved to cook and bake. Not only do I love to do eat, but I love being able to create something from scratch and share it with others. Whether it be making food for the holidays or just weeknight baking with my mom, my favorite memories growing up revolved around being in the kitchen with my family. Even though I love to cook, I got to a point in my life where I didn't find it enjoyable because I wanted to live a "healthy life". My version of health included cutting out food groups that I thought weren't "healthy", even though these foods once brought me my favorite memories. It’s taken me a while to understand that living a healthy lifestyle means living a balanced lifestyle with food. I love to cook healthy foods, but I also am a firm believer in eating how you want. Although this might sound so simple, I know that eating is a difficult subject for most people, especially women.
Our whole lives, we are inadvertently told when and how to eat. Food is a wonderful tool that has the ability to heal, but it also is a powerful weapon that can hurt. To me, the only part of eating that should be complicated is deciding what to do when you have a sweet or savory tooth! Above all, I want this page to be a place where I post recipes that are a perfect balance of health and comfort. A perfect balance means eating your greens and your sweets. It means eating your grains and your gains. Most importantly, it means eating to satisfy and to fuel. I have labeled this account unintentionally intentional because even though I grew up unintentionally learning food rules, I am now intentionally using that as a way to create a healthy lifestyle!