Creator at Dairy Free Ginger
Welcome! My name is Linda and I am the recipe developer, photographer and blogger behind the Dairy Free Ginger.
Before I started my blog in 2021, I had already created many of my own recipes. I often had friends asking for them. The problem was that many of them were not written down.
Which is when I started to learn the art of recipe writing. Before then I had just been creating delicious food and drinks from scratch for friends and family. With no list of instructions to follow. I baked many cakes and made random drink concoctions in the years leading up to my blogging days. I also worked as a cook and as a Starbucks barista.
I started my blog to share dairy free recipes that make life more enjoyable. Here you’ll learn to love baking and creating fancy coffee shop drinks right at home!
I want to help you learn all the tricks and nuances of how to bake and make hot dairy free lattes that are dairy free. I also love making a lot of fun dairy free iced drinks.
my Life at a glance
I live on a small acreage with my husband and our children. Currently, we are in a growing stage of life. We are growing our family, homestead and my garden! Along with working to build our own family business.
I love gardening and doing yard/farmwork. I am an immigrant to a warm part of the United States from northern Canada. And yes I miss the snow in the winter. But I don’t miss driving in it constantly or having to scrape ice off my windshield every day.
My Heritage
I have a strong Mennonite heritage. Both my parents grew up in traditional Mennonite homes. While I am not religiously a Mennonite, I still claim it as my cultural heritage because it is a huge part of who I am.
Mennonites are modest hardworking people and great farmers, and they also know how to cook. And when they cook everything is made from scratch with homegrown ingredients and often cook and bake without recipes.
If you have ever had the pleasure of being served a meal by a Mennonite lady, then you know what I’m talking about. They create food that is rich in cream and Butter. Which has made switching to dairy free a bit more difficult.
What I Do & Interests
Aside from being the content creator at the Dairy Free Ginger, I am a wife, mother, gardener and chicken farmer. Before I was all those things, I was a gymnastics and parkour coach. A pianist and vocal musician.
I don’t dedicate much time to those interests these days as I spend most of my time focused on my job as a homemaker and mother.
I loved my time as a coach getting to work with children. They really are one of God’s greatest gifts to us. Each one is precious and has so much of their own personality and value to give to the world
As a former gymnastics/parkour coach, I love to do handstands and walk on my hands. I still do handstands even when while I’m pregnant. Don’t worry my last baby didn’t come out upside down or confused.
And now that I’m done bragging let’s get into where my experience with food comes from.
Culinary Experience
When I lived with my parents regularly cooked for 8-10 people. I took an interest in cooking at about 12 years old. I remember bargaining with my mom to stay in and cook dinner, instead of working in the garden. While my mom was much happier out working in her garden.
I loved to read the dictionary and flip through my mom’s vast collection of cookbooks and handwritten recipes. Through that process I improved my culinary knowledge and abilitiy. I also tried out various types of recipes. Some of my favourite recipes to make are dairy free brownies and how to make espresso without anything.
Years & Type of Cooking Experience
I have been cooking and baking for 22 years. It has always been something I enjoyed.
Cake Decorating
In my teen years I spent countless hours baking birthday and wedding cakes for other people as a paid gig. I love cake decorating and still work on that for friends and family. I also made a lot pies that I have since started making dairy free.
Barista Experience
I have experience as a barista from working at Starbucks and also from creating many types of coffee shop drinks at home like a toasted vanilla oat shaken espresso. I now own an espresso machine which has helped me learn to make more types of coffee based drinks like this creamy coconut milk latte.
Cooking
I worked as a cook for a logging company. I was responsible for figuring out a meal plan for the week and purchasing groceries. Then I would prepare, cook and bake food for breakfast, lunch and dinner for about 20 people every day Mon-Fri. It was enjoyable and helped me learn how to prep food in advance like these oven meatballs or my crispy oven potato wedges.
Why Dairy Free Recipes?
It wasn’t until I was in my late teen years that I started to notice my intolerance to milk. For a while I just tried to avoid it.
And in my 20’s I started venturing into the dairy free lifestyle and my body thanked me for it.
I bake and cook using a lot of dairy free substitutes. I am always trying to recreate those rich and delicious dessert recipes that have a dairy base.
My goal, is to craft treats that my husband or anyone else, would never suspect to be dairy free.