Cooking wasn't a joy in Justine Doiron's household when she was growing up. To an impressionable girl, it felt more like a punishment. But whenever her parents went out for date night, she would sneak into the kitchen and bake a batch of cookies, which she would hide.
Then she would scrupulously clean the kitchen until it was gleaming. But that was the giveaway: The family had three children. The kitchen was never clean.
When her parents came home and saw a clean kitchen, they knew she had been cooking again. Doiron mainly grew up in Creve Coeur and Town and Country — with a seven-year stint in Hong Kong — and graduated from Westminster Christian Academy. A food blogger and social media star with 3 million followers, Doiron has just written a cookbook, "Justine Cooks: Recipes (Mostly Plants) for Finding Your Way in the Kitchen.
" In it are recipes for everything from Basic Beans to Lime-Roasted Cabbage with Turmeric White Bean Mash. She suffered from an eating disorder in high school and college, and thought that "cooking was something I should not be doing," she says. But she went to Cornell University to study hospitality and, although she intended to go into the business side of the field, she took some cooking classes as well.
That changed her life. The act of cooking helped her get better, and that fact eventually led to the cookbook. "I think a lot of people think the same, like they see cooking as intimidating or difficult or not an act of self-care.
And I think it'.
