In a nutshell…

I am dichotomy personified. Seriously playful, yet unyieldingly serious. Acutely intelligent, but prone to ‘blond’ moments. Left-brain logical, yet right-brain creative. Strong and weak. A flawed perfectionist. Candid, yet reserved. Complex in my simplicity. The quintessential romantic. Sensitive, but sensible. An adventurous, international eater and former vegetarian. Addicted to jazz, curries, lattes, wine and Masala Chai. I love orange in summertime. Not a writer, but an accountant who loves to cook and tell. I prefer crunching recipes in lieu of numbers. Armed with a passion for life and good food, tons of cookbooks, an active imagination — and tight jeans! I associate with lots of people, but I pick my friends like I pick my fruit. I am like that only!

I am a Houston-based food lover who also happens to be a real-life “Girl Interrupted,” in that I am a stage-4 breast cancer survivor. I’ve been through the whole nine — chemotherapy, surgery, radiation treatments and all of the physical, mental and emotional upheaval that accompany such horrible treatments. At the moment, the only other thing I will say is that I am a walking miracle of God. I have decided to put it all behind me and move on with the remainder of my life; however, if I can be of help to anyone whose life has been affected in some way by this insidious disease, please feel free to contact me.

My interest in cooking started when I was quite young, around age 4 or 5. I would watch my mom closely in the kitchen, begging to help out wherever I could. I loved it! Unfortunately, a bad experience resulted in my shying away from the kitchen for quite some time. One afternoon while my mom was napping I thought I would entertain myself by play cooking, as many little girls do. I decided to make spaghetti. I broke the noodles into small pieces, put them in a large plastic bowl and mixed them with water. Not being satisfied that the spaghetti had not softened up with the water, I figured putting the bowl into the oven for a few minutes would do the trick (the mind of a child!).

Needless to say, that ended in disaster and nearly scared my poor mother to death. Luckily, I didn’t burn the house down, but the melted plastic in the oven was a major mess, not to mention all the smoke. A few years later, my parents saw fit to present me with an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas. I was thrilled beyond words. Finally, I was able to express my culinary-self without fear, baking little cakes and pies to my heart’s content. Over the years, I continued watching my mom and by age 12 I was cooking simple family dinners a couple of times a week.

Well, I am still cooking, but more creatively these days. Though my tendency is to modify recipes in ways that I believe will enhance them, for my taste at least, there are those rare recipes that I consider to be so totally awesome that I willingly follow the instructions to the letter. Some of the recipes featured here are my own creations, some are recipes that I have significantly altered, and others are from cookbooks, magazines, friends and family with little or no adaptations. I provide the sources of all recipes.

About this Site

I’ve been surfing the Internet since 1998, admiring many of the lovely personal websites I’ve run across. In 1999, I made my first web page on AOL with a free programme called AOL Press, which probably no longer exists. I used the space mainly for journaling my day-to-day thoughts and activities (it wasn’t called “blogging” back then), which I did manually, via hand-coded HTML on a regular basis (I knew nothing of content management/blogging software, CSS, Java Script, Flash or PHP at the time.)

In May 2000 I decided to purchase my own domain name and expand my space; thus began divaflava.com. Since then, diva:flava and my interests have evolved quite a bit. In 2002, I began dabbling in graphic design and from then till now, the graphical layout of the site has run the gamut from simple to quite elaborate. The content, however, remained pretty much the same until I picked up photography again and began writing more about food than about my life and times. Eventually, cooking, blogging about food and creating images began to take on lives of their own, so I decided to spin off my food and photography related interests and give them a separate place here at divaflava.net.

This is where I chronicle my attempts at mastering the art of cooking well, enhanced with visuals. The words and images found here are expressions of my life-long passion for luscious, savory, spicy foods and my unyielding fascination with uncommon foods and recipes, and the chefs who create them. In short, diva:flava is my creative outlet for archiving and sharing my experiences of cooking, dining and living … out loud!

If I can be of help to you in any way, please feel free to leave a message in the “Comments” section of my journal or email me at divaflava@[NOSPAM]gmail.com (don’t forget to remove the NOSPAM part of the address). I’ll do my best to help in whatever way I can.

Thanks for hanging out with me. I hope you enjoyed your visit.

I’m out. Leave the key on the table.

Namasté.

Lynne J.

*Masti is a Hindi word meaning “mischievous fun”; a Punjabi expression for “intoxication with life.”

“As we begin to refine our thoughts - restricting and binding
the intentions behind our actions - the actions
themselves become refined.”
—David Life