Welcome and thanks for joining me!!

Hi, my name is LaRena! I have a BA in theater. I love cooking, baking, travel hacking,  homeschooling and recipe creating. I have several autoimmune issues, such as Hashimoto’s disease, and chronic urticaria, that have caused me to revamp my diet. I have done away with grains of all kinds, potatoes (for the time being), and refined sugars. I have had to do research and trial and error recipes to change the way I and my family eat. If I want to eat something I pretty much have to make it from scratch. I have found a way to make tasty and delicious food without grains, refined sugar and in many cases without dairy.

I make a lot of different dairy things from coconut milk as my children have a dairy allergy. Things like coconut buttermilk, coconut sweetened condensed milk etc.

My mother is from Sweden and I went to high school there. When I was little I was the hostess at my families Scandinavian restaurant in Ririe, Idaho, USA. Where my families restaurant won a distinction award.  My mother always raised us to celebrate our Swedish culture and traditions. We, therefore, celebrated Midsummer, Sankta Lucia and went to Sons of Norway.

I taught ESL and technical English Instruction in Utsunomiya-shi, Tochigi-ken Japan. I learned to write over 200 Kanji. Sounds impressive but doesn’t even qualify me for kindergarten in Japan. I speak Swedish, some Japanese and bits and pieces of various language. As I always think it is polite to ask a Frenchmen (if you are in France) “Do you speak English?” in French if you are in France. I try to be respectful of the country and culture I am visiting. I also think it is polite to at least say please and thank you in the language of the country you are in.  Therefore I can say please and thank you in over 10 languages probably more.

I love to travel and travel hack. That means I try to find the cheapest way to travel so that I can travel more often. Little tricks like using budget airlines to travel. Therefore my recipes tend to have international flairs as well as American.

I am currently homeschooling my high schooler. I love history, science, microeconomics, and improv theater. I have a BA in Theater. I have lived in other countries and love to learn about culture, customs, traditions, and languages. A mom to two almost grown kids and wife to my wonderful husband who is also my crush!!