Goyoaga - Cannelle et Vanille: nourishing, gluten-free recipes for every meal and mood

My earliest memory is the scent of cannelle et vanille: cinnamon and vanilla. My small three-year-old hands clutched my grandmother Mirens waist as I tottered, tiptoed, on the green stool she had pulled up beside her. She was my mothers mother, a pastry chef who was rarely far from the kitchen. She would spend hours there, with me at her side, pasteurizing the raw milk she bought from the dairy up the street. The pot would simmer on the stovetop, and the cream that would rise to the top was scooped out and spread heavily atop toast, finished with a sprinkle of cinnamon. But one of my favorite dishes was the steaming pots of arroz con leche, a creamy rice pudding, that same familiar scent of vanilla and cinnamon wrapping me up like the warmest blanket.

I grew up in a small Basque town called Amorebieta in northern Spain. My roots in the region are deep. In 1949, my grandparents, Angel and Miren, opened the only artisanal pastry shop in the village, Pastelera Ayarza. Some thirty years later, I would spend my youth in that very kitchen, spreading sugary, rich buttercream on rows and rows of delicate cookies.

Cooking defined my family. Between the pastry shop and the hours spent in our home kitchen, food provided a through line that extended between generations. It was as much a part of our familys shared identity as our Basque heritage. In my teenage years, as I searched for my own identity, I denied the pull of the kitchen and developed a secret eating disorder that haunted me for years. I felt compelled to separate from my family, to establish myself as an independent entity, so I left the Basque Country. I left the kitchen. I left everything my family held dear.

I covered a lot of ground in that journey. I landed in the United States, married my American husband, and lived in several cities across the country. I worked a few unfulfilling corporate jobs to put my business degree to use, but something was missing. Meanwhile, as I was striving to recover from my eating disorder, I found surprisingly that the kitchen became a refugea familiar place where I could be creative, nourish my body, and feel comforted. Ultimately, I could not escape its allure: it was my remedy. I stepped out of my self-imposed isolation and into my self-expression. I realized that cooking was in my blood all along and that I, too, wanted to be defined by it.

It was when my husband and I moved from Colorado to Florida that I finally found the courage to leave my career in business and enroll in a culinary schools pastry program. I worked as a pastry cook at night in several restaurants until I ended up in the pastry kitchen of a five-star hotel for three years. Then, in 2006, my son was born and things changed. The long hours and physical nature of the work didnt allow me enough time to care for my family, so I quit the professional kitchen. While I was raising my son and contemplating my next move, I started a blog, Cannelle et Vanille, which took me in a new, unexpected direction of writing and photography. After my daughter was born a couple of years later, I was diagnosed with Hashimotos and Mnires disease, and also discovered I had a gluten intolerance.

Today I live in Seattle with my husband and two children. My blog paved the way for a career as a photographer and food stylist, so most of my time now is spent in the kitchenthough my bright, open studio is very different from the warm, cramped space of my youth. The combination of Seattle dreariness and a photographers yearning for light drew me to the space in a hundred-year-old former stable with creaky steps and an ancient industrial elevator, just up the street from the historic Pike Place Market and down the hill from my home. Ive spent years honing it into the perfect intersection of practicality and inspiration.