About Babaganosh

Hello there!

I'm Kate. I started this blog a few years ago before I knew that food blogging was a *thing.* I just wanted a place to share my recipes and (hopefully) inspire others to cook at home more often.

I am passionate about creating easy, tasty, and (mostly) healthy recipes. I believe in cooking at home instead of ordering takeout even on busy nights.

Growing up in Ukraine and as an immigrant family in the Brooklyn, NY, my mom and grandma cooked every day. Getting takeout was just not a thing we did.

Added in March 2022: Recently people have had questions about why my recipes are called "Russian" when I am from Ukraine and why I speak Russian if I am from Ukraine. Ukraine was part of USSR when I was born (and for decades before that), and my grandmother lived in Russia for a long time - people moved for work or were assigned different cities in the USSR after WWII.

A lot of the food we eat is both Russian and Ukrainian. Up until February 2022, many people couldn't even find Ukraine on the map, so to make our delicious food known to the world I called the recipes "Russian cheese pancakes," "Russian beet salad," and "Russian stuffed cabbage" and so on. I've been going back and forth on whether to update the recipes to say "Ukrainian," but since my family made these recipes while living in Russia as well as while living in Ukraine, I feel like saying "Russian" is still accurate and will help more people discover our wonderful cuisine.

If you have questions, I encourage you to reach out and have a conversation with me, or with any other Ukrainian or Russian food blogger living in the US or in Canada (there are many of us!), or anywhere in the world. We are glad to talk about our background. And for the record, I am very much against the war in Ukraine and I have been donating to World Central Kitchen, International Rescue Committee, and Doctors without Borders to help with humanitarian efforts. I hope you can donate as well.

I learned to cook when I started living on my own after college, and it was a slow process - I remember calling my mom and asking "OK so to make pasta, do I boil the water first? But for rice I add the water and rice at the same time??"  I also ate chicken breast marinated in Italian dressing for an entire week straight because it was the only thing I mastered at age 20.

Luckily I am a little more confident in the kitchen nowadays. The only thing limiting my cooking is the lack of time. I am a stay at home mom to a wonderful energetic little boy and two cats (much less energetic, but still quite needy!)

I hope you'll follow along and make some of the recipes from my blog:

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If you would like to send me an email, please e-mail me at [email protected]. Let me know where you're from, what kind of food you like to cook, and what kind of recipes you'd like to see on this blog. I love hearing from my readers and creating recipes just for you!

Happy cooking!

- Kate

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