Through years of summers at my grandma and grandpa Conard’s house in Vershire, Vermont, winters at my grandma and grandpa Hamm’s “chalet” at Stratton and college in Houston, TX, some of the strongest influences in my life have come from Vermont and Texas. After bouncing around the northeast for most of life, I’ve now settled in Houston, and return frequently to visit my parents at their home in Bridport, VT.

Some of my earliest cooking memories took place in the Vershire house, “helping” my grandma make blueberry pancakes on Sunday mornings. I wasn’t actually allowed to help with anything significant of course. But sometimes I was allowed to dust the blueberries with flour, which was a great honor.

Vermont has also been pioneering the slow food/farm to table movement since wayyyyy before it was cool. My grandparents had apple trees with somehow always wormy apples, but I was obsessed with the idea of just picking apples from your own tree. They had a big garden too, and my dad has amazing gardens. In Bridport summer trips to the farmers market are a highlight of my visits, and the first year the apple trees on my parents’ property had a bumper crop I was in absolute heaven.

Moving to Houston, I had a lot of the preconceived notions that plenty of New Englanders (and Pacific Norwesterners, shout out to my anti-Texas cousin) have about Texas, but Houston is the best food city in the country (come at me New York). I can find any fruit, vegetable, type of restaurant or grocery store in this city. Shopping at H.E.B., Fiesta, or H-Mart, is a treat for me, and B&W Meat Company is a trip I reward myself with after a hard week. Hatch chile season is the most magical time of year, where the air outside grocery stores stings your eyes a little bit with the scale of chiles being roasted. Breakfast tacos, real barbecue, homemade tortillas, Szechuan Chinese, Oaxacan Mexican, gourmet donuts, kolaches and more have changed my life. Crawfish have not. I do not like crawfish. But Houston is the best food city in the country.

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I try to cook with all the combined influences of Vermont and Texas, and they’re not as different as people think. One has a little more spice, one has a little more granola, but they both have deep agricultural roots, condiments they’re fiercely proud of (hot sauce and maple syrup and combining them will change your life), pick up trucks, cows, a border with a neighboring country and a strong a belief that they could be their own country.

I haven’t always been a good cook (expert blueberry duster though), but I’ve always loved to experiment and work creatively in the kitchen. When I was in high school I made a Japanese feast that apparently had some uncooked bacon and supposedly made my brother’s friend excuse himself to the lavatory (he forgave me eventually). Shortly after that misadventure I ventured into Mexican food, making mole with only the information that it had chocolate and chiles. After eating seared beef chuck with a sauce made from semisweet chocolate chips, chipotle chile powder, and raspberry, my father delicately suggested that I take a cooking class. Actually I think he said he wasn’t going to eat anything else I cooked until I took a class. So I enrolled in Intensive Principles of Cooking, a six week night class at King’s Supermarket. Was it culinary school? No. Do I know how to chop an onion, make the mother sauces, and identify the correct cut of beef for each use? Absolutely. Did I meet a lot of divorcees and newlyweds in that class? I did. And no one’s gotten food poisoning since. So trust me, I’m a Vermontexan.