👋 Howdy from Milwaukee, Something you might not know about me: before I started my website, I was once a food tour guide in Honolulu! I got to spend each tour guiding hungry visitors around Honolulu, sharing the history of family-run businesses and snacks from my childhood. My official job title with Hawaii Food Tours was "Malasada Maven" We would eat our way around Chinatown while weaving in stories about local culture, history, and ingredients, ending up on a sweet note with malasadas at...

👋 A few musings from Milwaukee… People worried about my safety when I lived in Turkiye, considering it was led by an autocratic president, with hostile policies towards women’s rights, LGBTQ+, immigration, and the economy. Political opponents have been jailed and protests suppressed. The government controls the news so it's possible for a large portion of the population to be unaware of the severity… It's easy to see how quickly civil liberties can be eroded. But it’s also increasingly...

👋 Hello from the Midwest, After the past few weeks traveling up and down the East Coast, I decided to head west to Chicago. In the past, I've taken Amtrak's Capitol Limited in the eastbound direction to get to DC, so for this trip I opted to try a new-to-me route, the Cardinal, which passes through the mountains of West Virginia along the way to Chicago. Highlights for me included sitting next to a retired FBI evidence technician (!) for most of the trip, spotting a sign saying "Makawao...