I'm Lopa (My parents named me Lopamudra, but let’s not get into the art of pronouncing my name), a digital communications professional who loves to cook and write, and is obsessed about history. Born and raised in India, I'm currently based in the wilderness city, Whitehorse, Canada. I'm married to the sweetest guy I have ever met, Saurabh. Without his constant nudging, I wouldn't have started this space showcasing food stories from my humble kitchen.

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My love affair with food started when I was a little girl who sat outside my mother's kitchen and savored everything that mom cooked. Fast forward to the time when I was about twenty years old and had to live away from home, and missed the comfort of simple home cooked meals. Nostalgia met necessity, and the perfect setup got laid for my cooking experiments to burgeon. The steady guidance of the doting Punjabi auntie I lived with and some elaborate phone calls with my mother became the cornerstones of my cooking skills, subtly steering me in every kitchen I cooked thereafter.

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My culinary experience has been shaped through the places I have lived and travelled, and the people whose food I have relished eating. My parents are originally from the Indian state, Odisha, and my earliest exposure to food was my mother's  southern and eastern Odisha cooking. As my father's job kept us relocating between the states of Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, the food scene at home inculcated new elements from those places. I lived and worked for about fifteen years in Mumbai and Bangalore, loving the cosmopolitan cuisine I got to eat there and fondly cooking it in my everyday meals. My husband's family hails from the beautiful hills of Kumaon, Uttarakhand in India, and our marriage introduced me to a whole new world of Indian food. Moving and travelling through Canada has been a recent evolutionary transformation in my cooking journey. You will find many anecdotes in my posts of my adventures with cooking typical Indian recipes with completely atypical ingredients sometimes!

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My cooking style is both authentic and adoptive. I love local food cooked with seasonal and traditional ingredients and I also enjoy giving that occasional twist to the usual recipes depending on the ingredients I have at my disposal. This latter aspect is sometimes the upshot of, "cook your best with what you have!" 

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Food that I cook is predominantly vegetarian including eggs. Fish and seafood recipes are also regular on my blog. I enjoy exploring and creating vegan recipes from all the learning I've gained from being a novice in the kitchen to someone who loves to cook and feed. The guiding principle of my food philosophy is this pragmatic Marry Berry quote, "Cakes are healthy too, you just eat a small slice." I'm not averse to indulging sometimes, although I try to ensure that food I cook is balanced and nourishing.

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I explore food history and regional contexts associated with food through research papers and books, interacting with other food enthusiasts and culinary experts, and deep diving into documentaries. You will find in-depth longform essays in this blog where I sometimes unravel nuances of an ingredient, a technique or a community behind a dish. Food writing is an integral part of my culinary interests and adventures alike.

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I am the author, photographer and designer behind this website. Although I wouldn't call myself a photographer, I try my best to capture my kitchen creations on my phone camera and sometimes a humble DLSR.

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Food is a confluence for my creative endeavours and cooking is therapeutic for me. Reading and learning about food, creating a hearty meal and writing about that entire process is what Away in the Kitchen is about — a melting pot of recipes, stories and citations from my cooking over fourteen years!