About Me

I am a girl who is currently living in Korea, en route to pursuing my dream in France, to reconnect with my past, especially my lovely family, and to overcome all the conflicting consciousness that prevents me from growing into a being with more understanding and love. I’m glad that I have come through the frustrating first stage of readjusting, facing the reality of not being able to eat all the yummy things I used to enjoy, especially cheese, wine, cherries and salmon.

In many ways, I feel very privileged to have lived in Australia and New Zealand, the countries of unpretentious landscape, beautiful beaches and fresh produce available all year around and, the most importantly, where I found love not only for food but also for a man for life who played a crucial part in my becoming who I am now. I had tried a lot of recipes on him and each time he graciously put  up with my obsession for food, giving me encouragement, which I didn’t know at that time that it was just an English culture of trying not to offend people, which I had learnt from the book, The English by Jeremy Paxman . Now an English man’s compliment is like a lullaby and I don’t take it seriously; the same goes for French men.

Although Australia might not be the best country to experience high-end cafes and restaurants by international standards, it has its own uniqueness that comes from the mingling and twisting of European and Eastern cuisines in the bold creativity, which has naturally influenced my cooking. And to be honest, after my foodie trip to Europe, I found Australian food really good and I missed the diversity, generosity and freshness, which some people might not agree to. 

I ate out almost everyday for the first few years in the excitement of  my never-ending discoveries of new flavours and new dishes, watched food channels all day long  and tried out many of the recipes seen on the TV and internet. It was during that time that I started to hear my inner voice obsessing me with food and photography. The voice, too loud to ignore, led to my creating this blog, in part, as a means of keeping track of both my success and failure in my cooking adventures and to save my sanity by having a space I could pour my energy of the 2os into.  4 years on, I began to realise that my obsession with food had changed not only my personality but also my facial line -  from non-stop exercising of my jaw muscles – and I had to decide whether I should keep feeding my appetite for food, which was, instead of getting fed up, growing bigger and bigger by day. If I’m not eating or cooking, I’m reading, writing or talking about or taking photos of food – or looking at food, thinking up recipes in supermarkets or during my walks; sometimes I catch myself making up recipes while teaching in class!

Food is a huge part of who I am as is love, and the kitchen is my favourite part of the house and looking into the fridge filled to bursting is my entertainment. So people joke that I need to set up a matress in the kitchen and sleep. Then, suddenly, after coming back home, I had moments when I would watch  my mum prepare food with tenderness and fondness to be soon overcome by a slightly peculiar unease as if I were looking at myself in a couple of decades. My mum seems to have passed the foodie genes to me and, just like her, I enjoy feeding people with yummy things I make with love and care – and there is my dad, a good eater and a huge fan of my mum’s cooking.

For the reason I cook, which is to eat, stay healthy and enjoy life, I put emphasis on naturalness and nutritional values of dishes I make rather than their looks, and you may find my food lacking in decoraton and make-up such as sauce, dressing or icing.  However, occasionally I do make vain attempts to cook something  just for the sake of food photography, but it usually doesn’t taste as good as food I whip up on a whim without any recipes or plans, totally out of my foodie intuition. I prefer to cook with whatever I have in the fridge at the time of cooking so I never seem to make the same thing twice. And I think my creativity plays a huge advantage there. I’m also a minimalist who doesn’t own much in terms of cooking tools or camera equipments – lucky I have a steady hand to take food shots in low lighting in my kitchen- and feel guilty about wasting food and materials; I’m always the one who finishes off whatever is left on other people’s plates as well as mine!

Since I don’t have obligations to keep the number of posts up, I write whenever I feel like it. Some weeks I get an explosion of ideas and energy to put on actions in the kitchen. That may result in days and weeks of silence, though I push myself to write a few words as often as I can, due to my unusual work schedules.

I’m still in the process of figuring out what to do with this nagging obsession with food, and to the surprise and disbelif of many who may have been disappointed by my unexpectedly stretched stay in Korea, my French dream hasn’t ended yet.  Luckily or unluckily, I’m currently contributing to KoreaTaste Organisation, where you can catch a glimpse of my Korean side. You can also see some of the photos from my two-month long European travel here.

Finally, the reason why I gave my blog the name “Butterfly Garden” is that it reflexes my longing and sacrifice for freedom. I will grow slowly and steadily, eating away everything and anything in my way, rejoicing and crying until the moment I finally take my first flight. Maybe, one day in 10, 2o or 30 years, my blog might win the longest running blog! I’m going to stop being lazy and put extra efforts into upgrading my photography skills as well as cooking skills, so I hope I will post more recipes, photos and stories that spark your interests and make you come back for more in the future.

Thank you for stopping by and I can be contacted at nanxi78@gmail.com if you wish to drop a line.

Nancy Namie

Food talks louder than words.

p.s. “eateng”, the name of the site, came from Eating English, which I made up when I was trying to combine teaching English with food and cooking. Just in case you are wondering.