I am Amanda Rivers, and the story of Cuisiniu is the story of trying to find home when you are thousands of miles away from it.
I never intended to be a food blogger. When I moved to a new city, leaving everything and everyone I knew behind, my only goal was to survive. I was chasing an opportunity, but what I found was a crushing, echoing loneliness. I didn’t speak the local language well. I didn’t understand the culture. Every evening, I would return to an empty, quiet apartment, the silence so loud it hurt my ears.
I started cooking purely out of homesickness. I would wander the unfamiliar aisles of foreign grocery stores, searching desperately for ingredients that reminded me of my mother’s table. I failed constantly. The flour behaved differently, the water tasted strange, the produce wasn’t what I was used to. I threw away so many burnt, terrible meals while sitting on my kitchen floor, crying out of sheer frustration and isolation.
I was ready to pack my bags and quit. I felt like I was failing at life. But then, an elderly neighbor, who had seen me crying on the stairs, knocked on my door. She didn’t speak my language, and I didn’t speak hers. But she handed me a plate of warm, freshly baked bread. In return, the next day, I made her a dish from my home country, infused with my love for any type of recipes.
That exchange changed my life. We started cooking together, communicating through gestures, tastes, and smiles. She taught me how to use local ingredients, and I taught her my traditional spices. I realized then that food is the universal translator. It breaks down walls that words cannot.
I created Cuisiniu because I wanted to reach out into the vast, lonely void of the internet and build a community. I wanted to document my chaotic, beautiful journey of blending my roots with my new world. If you are here, maybe you are looking for comfort, too. Pull up a chair. You are not alone here.