A recipe for mango salsa changed my life. I was 26 years old, flying back to New York after visiting my parents in Colorado. My mom gave me a food magazine to read on the plane, and I spotted a recipe for mango salsa.
At that point in my life I didn’t cook very much, and I rarely tried anything new. My limited repertoire featured my mother’s (very good) chili, blueberry muffins, pancakes, chicken breasts and vegetables, and a variety of cookies and desserts. If anything, I was a more experienced baker than cook (which is not saying much, however). But I was hungry–a lot–and I craved good food.
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A week or so after I returned home, I prepared the mango salsa, a rough assemblage of scallion, jalapeno pepper, salt, sugar, cilantro, lime and mango. Perfectly simple to prepare and utterly delicious, it was a flavor-popping marriage of sweet and savory. My fate–as a food lover and a cook–was sealed.
Reading that food magazine and trying a recipe or two out of it, I began to believe that I could actually make good food myself, as opposed to always having to go out for it. I also evolved into a more adventurous eater, both at home and in restaurants, adding fresh figs, cilantro, and pomegranate molasses to my list of favorite ingredients. These were revelations that changed the texture of my life immeasurably–from where I traveled to how I spent my spare time to how I fed my family. My day-to-day existence was simply more enjoyable than it ever was before.
A few years after my mango salsa epiphany, I enrolled in a professional culinary school, and today I am a personal chef and culinary instructor. As a cooking teacher I work with moms (mostly) across the city, women who like me once had little confidence in the kitchen. I truly believe that anyone can cook. Through my company, Rosaberry, and my writing I hope to inspire people to step into the kitchen and discover that cooking and feeding yourself and your family is an accessible pleasure.
As eaters, everyday we have three opportunities to experience happiness and feel good about what we’re putting into our bodies. This is what drives me. The fact that we all have the chance to get this buzz each and every day is a gift worth savoring.
–Jenna Helwig, founder of Rosaberry
