Hi, I’m Dasha and welcome to Charming Food, a food blog with easy recipes first-time cooks can make at home with step-by-step videos that are simple to follow. Make one of our recipes for your friends or family and they’ll have no idea you’re not secretly a qualified chef!
The people behind Charming Food
I’m just one piece of a food blog puzzle. I develop the delicious recipes and shoot the drool-worthy photos for Charming Food while by husband, Vlad, creates the beautiful videos that show you just what to do.
And I can’t forget our adorable Shih Tzu, Jerry! Not only is he the main taste taster for Charming Food (Don’t worry, we don’t ever give him chocolate! He only tries the dog-safe dishes.), he’s also the best vacuum cleaner a chef could ask for.
Dasha’s history with cooking and baking
When I was younger, I was never that interested in cooking or baking. My grandma used to invite me to watch her create all kinds of deliciousness in the kitchen. And while I was more than happy to gobble up everything she created, I didn’t want to be involved in the making process. I wanted to be outside playing with my friends!
This probably had something to do with my lack of skills during my first few years in the kitchen. I remember a lot of flat deflated cakes and cookies there were as hard as rocks…but my grandma still persevered, determined that I’d learn to bake.
It wasn’t until I met my loving husband that things turned around and I started putting more effort into the kitchen. It was at that time that I really began to develop my passion for baking and I soon learned that a little love goes a long way — even in a recipe.
Fast forward 6 years and our little family is obsessed with cooking and baking. So much so that we had to create a blog to document it all and share our creations with the world.
Sometimes opposites attract
Although Vlad and I are both incredibly passionate about cooking, we’re both 2 very different people. I’m vegan with a never-satisfied sweet tooth that lives on a totally plant-based diet and Vlad is a pizza lover who is into savory eats much more than sweet treats.
But we’re more than happy to put our differences aside when it comes to Charming Food because it means we get to do one of our most favorite things together — share our recipes with other people from around the world.
Speaking of around the world, another thing we love to do together is travel. Vlad and I try to travel at least 4 times each year to new places we’ve never visited before. So far the favorite place I’ve visited is Slovenia and Vlad’s is Austria. We absolutely adore trying the local food wherever we go and meeting other like-minded foodies.
Dasha’s passion for cooking and baking today
Although I wasn’t really into food in my early years, my whole life is based around it today. While Vlad makes time to record Charming Food’s videos around his full-time job as a video editor, I’m lucky enough to work from home and focus all my attention on our food blog.
There’s just something so incredible about taking seemingly ordinary ingredients, combining them together with a little bit of love and creating something incredible that you never thought you were capable of.
Even better if you can use locally-sourced, seasonal ingredients. Vlad and I have our own mini herb garden where I grab the fresh herbs we use in our recipes. I swear it makes all the difference and requires practically no effort. You should try it!
What makes Charming Food different?
There are 10,000s food blogs on the internet. And I know if we’ve got any chance of you reading ours, we’ve got to make it extra special!
To make Charming Food stand out from the crowd and make it worth your while to read (we know you’ve got a million other things on your to-do list apart from cooking and baking!) we make sure we test our recipes again, again and again so they’re as perfect as can be. We know what a waste of time and money it is to follow a recipe only for it to totally fall through. And we don’t want that for you!
We understand that not everyone is an expert in the kitchen. But that doesn’t mean you can’t create awesome dishes. To help out even the most amateur cooks, we create super simple recipe cards that are really easy to follow, we provide you with preparation tips to help you get it right first time, we offer serving suggestions so you can make a full meal of it and (here’s the best bit) each recipe comes with an amazing food video with step-by-step instructions on how to make each dish. This is ideal if you’re more of a visual learner than a reader.
Of course, if you have any questions or comments about any of the recipes, you can always get in touch by filling out our contact form. We promise we’ll get back to you asap so you can get back into the kitchen creating bites of deliciousness!
Bringing people together through food
I think one of the reasons food is so special to us is that it can really bring people together. Even families made up of people spread all over the world still get together for Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas to sit around a dinner table, dig into some incredible food (probably made from recipes that have been used for generations!) and enjoy spending time with each other.
Even with everything that’s currently going on with the world, taking the time to listen to each other while savoring delicious home-cooked meals that have been made from the heart is an excellent way of temporarily forgetting everything that’s going on and focus on what matters the most — friends and family!
I hope the recipes you find on Charming Food help bring you and your friends or family together for a little bit of peace, quiet and quality time.
Enjoy!