My name is Daktari. My great passions in life are plants, teaching, and food. You might say that cooking is my mid-life crisis. I only discovered the joy of cooking in middle age. I grew up in the foothills of the Appalachians where there wasn't much ethnic or culinary diversity. I had my first Mexican meal in college. When I moved to Chicago as a young adult, I was blown away by the different types of food I had available to me. Now that I live far from a major urban area, I must create these tastes for myself. So on any given weekend, you can find me drooling over moussaka, various salsas, Thai food, anything containing coconut and curry, and bread. I love bread. I love everything about bread. When I die, if there's a heaven, it smells like baking bread and the texture is that of yeast rolls.
