Welcome to Real Food Sanity

It took me 25 years to find my home - a place with no limits to share my newest recipes, tips, hacks and favorite finds helping you find the joy and ease in cooking without the social media noose.

A Quarter of a Century

That’s how long I’ve been figuring out what to do with my life. Twenty-five years…a quarter of a century! And yes, I realize as I’m typing this, some of you haven’t even reached this milestone yet.

Food has always been a part of my life. I’m told as a toddler I would visit the fridge at each meal and return to the table with ingredients to add to my meal. When my classmates were collecting Barbies, I was combing magazines to grow my recipe collection.

My love for all things food and cooking was a recurring theme all the way through my teenage years and college when I started experimenting by cooking for my friends and family. Four years getting a requisite college degree then working a tech sales job, however, sidetracked me from this love and I got lost.

The path came back into view shortly after my first son was born. My husband and I were hanging with a group of friends discussing destiny, purpose, dreams. You know, just light chit-chat. They spotlighted me “so what’s your passion?”

In that moment, I realized I wanted nothing to do with sales anymore, but I wanted to create with food for a living. Writing a cookbook had also been a recurring thought. I even loved food photography. The problem was, I was sitting there with an 11 month old having never cooked in a restaurant and, at that time, never written a recipe.

I didn’t know how to start but found a way working at a cooking school a few days a month and eventually wound up teaching a few classes myself. My mentor there encouraged me by saying my classes were some of the most well received and attended. I was back on the path.

blog recipe creation circa 2005

A couple of years later blogging suddenly became a thing, and the book Julie and Julia introduced me to the idea of writing about food independently of a publisher or printed magazine. I had the big dream that I could be the next “Julie”, blogging the hundreds of recipes that I had in my head, getting lots of followers, then getting pegged by a publisher to write a cookbook. Clearly…that isn’t how the story went.

When I started writing in 2005, blogs were all about story and there was no formula to follow. No SEO spiders to please and get your content pushed to the top of a search. It was really, truly like a writing a personal recipe log or journaling and just as cathartic.

I wasn’t tech savvy (in spite of working in tech sales) and didn’t understand how ads and affiliate relationships worked so I just wrote for the pure joy of writing and creating recipes without getting paid a dime.

Jumping without a parachute into our huge dream of living in Napa Valley for my husband to work in the wine industry led to piles of debt. Writing was set aside to pay the bills cooking for winery owners and their families.

The grapes…our dream and our downfall.

Almost 20 years going around and around this mountain of blogging for no money then working as a private chef when the money ran out, I realized that writing was THE ONE THING that brought me joy and didn’t feel like work. I just needed to figure out how to make money doing it. Having all those annoying ads on my posts was most definitely not how I wanted to support my work.

This cycle helpe me realize I loved helping people find the joy in cooking for themselves more than I liked cooking for them. The niche was narrowing but in those almost 20 years of writing, Google search and social media algorithms were turning the joy of writing into a chore. Every blog post required 20 steps to please little search engine bots and hope they would find my work (they didn’t.) Social media algorithm gods demanded I churn out daily social media posts following trends, doing a dance or making googley-eyed faces while eating on camera. For this introvert, it was beyond daunting and I finally refused to comply.

At Last…Home

A couple of months ago, it finally clicked. I had visited the Substack ‘hood several times, much like you check out a potential brick and mortar neighborhood before taking the plunge and buying that house. I had done my due diligence researching all the ways I could write online and maybe make money. I saw some of my favorite food content creators and people I have followed for years on social media - Caroline Chambers Justine Doiron and Alison Roman - were already here.

But it was Danielle Walker who made me jump in with both feet. Her inaugural post about why she joined Substack as publisher really hit home. I was feeling so many of the same frustrations!

It was time to become a full-time food writer and recipe developer on my own terms. No more waiting for the elusive 10,000+ followers on social media, no creating treatments to try and get a publisher to consider my idea. I clicked the Substack button and will not turn back. This is where I’m writing and if a cookbook deal works out, that will be a bonus.

Welcome to Real Food Sanity

Hi…I’m Christi. The mom friend you text when your neighbor leaves a basket of zucchini on your porch and you need recipes. You need to know how to cobble together dinner on a Tuesday when you haven’t had time to shop? I’ve got you. No idea how to boil water? Hang with me and you will become the accomplished home cook you’ve dreamed of being. Substack chats make an active community possible without all the noise on social media. You’ve got a cooking/food question? You have direct access to me.

I’m ecstatic to have a place where I have no limits. Whether I find an amazing cookbook that will completely change your life, I have this awesome recipe that I just came up with on a Saturday morning or I’ve visited a new city from which I want to divulge all my food finds. I don’t have to spend hours researching the right title and keywords the bots will pump up the search ladder. I just get to share with you.

I created Real Food Sanity to connect or reconnect people and food. My hope is it will enrich your body, soul and spirit with:

• Recipes that take you on a journey of finding the joy and ease in creating flavor-packed meals from foods that our great grandparents would recognize, not chemicals and flavor enhancers

• My favorite finds - A cookbook review, list of my favorite Costco finds, or any number of other food-centric topics.

• My best tips, tricks and techniques for how to make cooking a self-care ritual vs being one more chore

• And finally, personal stories woven around my table, food and those who create, grow and raise it

Each issue will be curated into a publication so lovely and vital to your soul, it will become a much needed and honestly, wanted break, from social media. My hope is you will be inspired to go to your own kitchen and create something amazing for yourself and those you love.

Hey. You’re still reading, so how about joining me. It’s going to be awesome! I hope you’ll support me in this journey to independent writing.

For only $7.99 a month (or less than a latte) or $75 a year (less than $1 per recipe) you will receive my email straight in your inbox (or if you’re not an OCD email deleter and they get lost you can find them and read on the app without fear of losing it.)

Subscribe for free and get my curated “Life at the Table” newsletter. It’s completely free forever but just to keep you in the loop and avoid FOMO, I will send you previews of every post I write. You just might decide you’re wanting a little more.

And if you need an awesome gift, you can gift a subscription: Teacher gifts, Mother’s Day, “Just Because”, Bridal Shower, or recover from “Crap…I forgot to buy a gift” and look like you planned it.

Oh and if you have a desire to write, too, I highly recommend The Substack Soirée (AKA Keeley Rees and Sara Tasker - Me & Orla) to set your mind right and learn how set up your own little Substack home. They convinced me that my writing deserves to be read. Thanks, girls!