And dishbyma is my little corner of the internet!
I was working as a graphic designer in Boston when I moved to Asheville in 2015. The first thing I did after unpacking was start a tiny herb garden on my balcony. Cooking those fresh herbs turned into nightly experiments, and I realized I loved sharing the results with friends. That impulse led me to launch dishbyma in the summer of 2017, initially just a handful of blog posts and a photo of my first roasted carrot soup.
In the first year I posted once a week, but word of mouth and a few Instagram shares pushed the traffic higher than I imagined. By March 2020 the site was pulling in 15,000 unique visitors a month, and after I added a printable recipe‑card feature in 2021 the numbers jumped to 45,000 by the end of 2022. Today dishbyma hosts over 120 tested recipes, three e‑cookbooks, and a monthly newsletter that reaches more than 20,000 subscribers. I’m grateful that a simple kitchen experiment turned into a resource that helps home cooks across the U.S. and Canada.
I now call Asheville my home, sharing a modest house with my husband, Alex, and our two energetic kids, Lily (7) and Noah (5). On weekends you’ll usually find us hiking the Blue Ridge trails, hunting for wild berries to toss into a fresh salsa, or curled up on the porch listening to classic jazz records. My favorite kitchen tools are a well‑seasoned cast‑iron skillet, a sturdy wooden spoon, and a vintage hand‑crank coffee grinder I rescued from a flea market. When I’m not cooking, I love digging through old vinyl crates and adding new finds to our growing collection.
A tiny quirk about me is that I keep a notebook titled “Kitchen Misadventures” where I jot down every burnt toast or accidental extra‑spice moment. Those little failures have taught me that cooking is as much about improvisation as it is about technique, and I try to pass that mindset on to anyone who visits dishbyma. If you ever swing by the site and see a recipe with a handwritten note in the margin, that’s probably me reminding myself to “taste before you salt.” I hope you feel welcome enough to try, tweak, and share your own stories.