Hi, I'm Toti

I was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria — an ancient, beautiful city full of Roman ruins and cobblestone streets. I came here when I was young with the man who would become my husband. We built our life together in this country, and now our little family is the five of us — me, my husband, and our three kids, two girls and a boy. They are my reason for almost every recipe on this site.

I have a bachelor's degree from back home, and over the years I've worked many different jobs here. But cooking has always been my real love. From the very beginning, I made it a priority to feed my family home-cooked meals and from-scratch desserts — not because it was easy, but because it felt right. That's how the people in my life have come to know me: through food made with my own two hands.

So much of what I cook today, I learned at my mom's elbow. And the dough — oh, the dough — that came from my baba. She was the dough master of our family. Banitsa, pitka, tutmanik, maslenitsa, mekitsi… she had it all in her hands, and I spent years just watching her work, trying to memorize every fold and pull. A lot of those recipes live here now, the way she taught me.

When I close my eyes, I can still see my baba making us katmi — thin, golden, served warm — and my mom's buhti, soft little fried pillows of dough that disappeared from the plate the second she set it down. Those are the smells and tastes of my childhood, and they're what I try to bring into my own kitchen for my kids.

For sixteen years now, every Saturday morning, I've been teaching the Bulgarian language to kids born in America to Bulgarian parents — keeping the language and the culture alive. It's some of the most meaningful work I do, passing on a little piece of home to the next generation, the same way my grandma passed her kitchen down to me.

That's really what this site is about: sharing the cozy, tested, no-stress recipes my family loves, in case they bring a little warmth to your kitchen too.

Questions about a recipe? Always welcome.