Hi there! I’m Tina and the creator of The Saffron Stories – a vegan recipe blog where I share my love for food, flavors and photography!
So why vegan?
Well, I grew up vegetarian so meat was never part of my life, but dairy sure was. However, in my mid-20s I began getting ill, having chronic digestive issues, headaches and mood swings. After a few doctors visits and some testing, I found out that I was severely lactose intolerant.
I slowly began removing dairy from my diet because I knew my health depended on it. Because I love food so much, I knew I had to come up with new ways to recreate my favorite foods without dairy. This began my passion for cooking and exploring ingredients in the kitchen.
While I do eat a little butter or honey from time to time, my diet is 95% vegan and I do believe that going towards a ore plant-based diet can be beneficial for most people and of course the planet.
I choose to only share vegan recipes because I want others to see that vegan food can still taste as amazing as non-vegan food, while making a positive impact on health and the earth.
In addition, growing up in an Indian household, I was exposed to amazing spices, herbs and flavors. I love cooking traditional dishes and also putting new spins on the classics I love. My mom not only loved cooking Indian food, but tons of other types of cuisines, like Mexican, Thai and Italian. I credit my passion and love for cooking primarily to her!
If you are vegan, I hope you enjoy the recipes I share on my blog here. If you aren’t, I hope you venture out and give some of them a shot – and if you do, please leave a comment or shoot me an email to let me know how you like them!
If you’re interested in learning a bit more about my journey to this blog, keep reading…
I’ve had quite the path getting back into photography. Back in 2001, I went to college in New York City and majored in photography. We learned film, as digital wasn’t as popular at that time, and I still love film to this day although I don’t shoot with it as much.
The photography program as my college was only 2 years and I didn’t feel ready to go out into the real world just yet, so I decided to get another degree in graphic design. From there I went on to working as a graphic designer at an ad agency for about 9 years.
During the last few years of my agency life, I began getting more and more into nutrition and healthy eating. I decided to get my holistic health coaching certification and realized that I wanted to be helping others live healthier happier lives instead of sitting behind a desk all day.
Eventually I left the agency world for good and continued learning about other holistic healing modalities such as EFT and Ayurveda, as I worked with clients from around the world. I had a blog where I shared articles on healthy living and healthy recipes and even began to dip my foot in the food photography world.
After a few years, I just couldn’t sustain my career. I learned very quickly just how difficult entrepreneur life was. I had already decided to move out of New York City and was searching for my next home.
In 2015, I met my husband Johann, in an Ayurveda coarse in Portland, Maine – he was living in Los Angeles at the time. Over the course of the next few months we stayed in touch and even met up when I came to Los Angeles to lead a retreat with a friend of mine. We quickly fell for each other and next thing you know, in July of 2016 I was moving to LA!
For the first two years in LA, I worked alongside a Functional Medicine as a health coach and then ran the nutrition program at a boutique personal training facility in Santa Monica.
The opportunity to work with my husband came up as he realized the need to address parts of his business that he didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with – primarily, marketing. He built an amazing Ayurvedic herbal supplements company from the ground up, Lotus Blooming Herbs, but was a one-man show for seven years.
Working with Johann has been one of the greatest gifts for me personally. Not only do I get to support him and products I believe in, but it allowed for flexibility in my schedule that allowed me to rediscover my passion for food photography again.
Leaving New York, the only home I knew for my whole life, to relocate across the country was incredibly difficult and in that process I felt I had lost of what made me feel inspired and passionate. Art has always been in my blood and not creating was affecting me more than I thought.
I can soy without a doubt that getting back into recipe development and food photography has given me that outlet to create again and I feel so much more alive and passionate about life because of it.
If you got to the bottom of this story, I want to thank you for coming to my blog, reading this and hopefully checking out a few of my recipes!