Hi, I’m Wing. Always curious about FOOD. LOVE VEGETABLES. 野菜大好き！I Cook and Eat a lot of Colourful Things.
I grew up in Hong Kong and worked as a food reporter after graduating, which let me sample a lot beyond typical Cantonese food. At that time, my Mom was working in a Japanese healthy food store where she always brought home the good stuff that nourishes our bodies. I started to receive a bundle of messages that we had to take care of our health.
Being curious about Japanese food, I moved to Tokyo for a working holiday. There I worked in a Japanese online supermarket, every day surrounded by top-class produce with a strict food safety policy applied. And I also got the privilege of traveling around Japan!
Cocoroaji was born there, filled with good restaurant reviews and scenic photos.
Akin to many others, when time passes by, I questioned myself, ‘is that what life is about? What is my Ikigai?’
Searching for a no-answer, the most important person showed up in my life – my Indian husband, Curry Boy. Perhaps it was by chance, or maybe we made it happened. We decided to turn to a new life chapter – moving from Japan to Germany.
From a foodie heaven to a food desert during COVID, this drastic change forced me to cook every day, every single meal. On top of that, after reading a book and watching 3 documentaries on Netflix, we tried to cut off meat at home and focus on vegetable cooking.
As Asians, we love rice and hot-served food. But living in a European country, adapting to a mostly plant-based diet with Asian-like flavour, there ain’t many options.
Since I’m facing this challenge, exploring different vegetarian dishes and blogging about them has become my hobby. And most importantly, I can simply look up my blog and remake it again! That’s how I started to write about our cooking.
Our food is certainly not the most photogenic, but it is always nourishing.
My goal is simple: use simple and handy ingredients to cook a healthy and delicious meal easily every day.
Take the recipes as guidelines, not rules. Follow your instincts, and cook whichever vegetables you have on hand. They’ll turn out to be fine. If cocoroaji inspires you to cook and eat more vegetables, I’ll be very happy!
What does cocoroaji mean?
I created this word, cocoroaji .
It can be literally translated in Japanese : ‘cocoro’ (こころ) is heart or soul, while my name also has a ‘heart’ in it.; ‘aji’ (あじ) means taste. You can say it’s something expressed from my heart. Don’t laugh, I quite like it, and I hope you feel it the same way.
So, please come to join me, to embrace the wonderful and colourful vegetables together, or just come by to say hi, tell me something, or anything about Bristol, UK. (What? Yes, we moved again!)
Let’s keep in touch!
Cheers,
Wing