Well Rounded Meals, Well Rounded Life
Diana VeechA Pride Month introduction that is about twelve years overdue.
Hi. I'm back.
I know, I know. It has been a minute. MayCember absolutely leveled me this year — and if you are a parent you already know exactly what MayCember is. If you don't, it's the end of school year sprint where every single day brings a new event, a new permission slip, a new "wear your favorite color tomorrow" notification at 9pm, and approximately zero margin for anything resembling a normal week. The Food Critic and the Taste Tester kept me very busy and very tired and the blog paid the price.
But it is June now. School is out. And it is Pride Month.
Which means it is the perfect time to properly introduce myself.
Hi. I'm Chef Susie. And I'm Part of the "Family"
If you have been following along for a while you may have already pieced this together. I have mentioned my wife. I have referenced our ten year anniversary trip to Italy. I talk about our family constantly because our family is genuinely the reason any of this exists.
But I have never sat down and said it directly, on the record, in a blog post with my whole chest.
So here it is: Well Rounded Meals is a queer owned business. I'm about as lesbian and lesbian can be. And this month I want to let you in a little more.
Not because it changes anything about the food or content. Not because the recipes or the chef tips are different or the salt guide is somehow gay-er than you previously thought (although, I can be a salty queen). But because you have been letting me into your kitchens and your dinner routines for a while now, and it feels right to let you fully into mine.
The Meet Cute
About nineteen years ago I was a student at the University of Kentucky. My "friend" (wink) wanted to visit the brand new LGBTQ resource center on campus — the first one the university had ever had, lovingly built by a very determined woman (whom I might have been afraid of at first) named Caitlin.
I stood in the doorway for awhile. I was not fully out at this point. I was doing that thing where you hover at the edge of something because walking through the door feels like too much of a statement.
Caitlin looked up at me from across the room and said — and I want you to really appreciate this — "You won't catch it, you know. If you come in. The gay."
I (uncomfortably) scoffed like an absolute idiot and said something along the lines of oh I'm not worried about that and walked in.
Dear reader, I was definitely a little worried about that.
After that, we were close friends all through college. She was very out. I was still figuring so many things out. We graduated, went our separate ways and did our respective things in the world. And then one fateful Friday the 13th (April 13, 2011 to be exact) we went out for a catch up drink.
The rest is history. Twelve years of marriage and counting.
The Family
Here is what I want you to know about our family: we are just a family.
We do not use a lot of qualifiers. We are not the "two mom family" or the "queer household" in the way that makes it sound like an asterisk. We are just Susie and Caitlin and the Food Critic and the Taste Tester, navigating the beautiful chaos of keeping small humans alive, fed and laughing as much as we can along the way.
The Food Critic has opinions about everything and will tell you directly if your food needs work (or salt). The Taste Tester is covered in something at all times and full of joy. Caitlin is the woman who accidentally launched this food business by posting in a Facebook group of 8,000 moms and then very calmly telling me "we had interest." And I'm the one who stood in a doorway nineteen years ago and changed my whole life by walking through it.
We are a normal ass family. That is the whole story.
The Whipped Cream Moment
By normal ass family, I definitely do not mean boring. And while you might read this headline as something potentially dirty (I know this because this is how I would read this), this is just a perfect family memory that shows the kind of fun we really are.
Arden was four. Ivy was two. It had been one of those days where Caitlin and I were both running on empty and the toddlers were doing what toddlers do, which is everything at maximum volume with zero regard for the adults in the room. Can we say overstimulated?
Caitlin opened the fridge and found some whipped cream. She looked at Arden and said — completely out of nowhere — "Have you ever been pied in the face?"
She put whipped cream on a plate. She put it on his face. He absolutely lost it laughing. Then we turned to Ivy. Same thing. More laughing. And then they came after me with whatever was left while I was still filming. At the end of the video I lean over and give Caitlin a kiss on the cheek. We were laughing until we cried.
That is us. That is the family behind Well Rounded Meals. Chaos and whipped cream and laughing until you cry and a kiss on the cheek when the day has been hard.
What Well Rounded Actually Means
I named this business Well Rounded Meals because I believe that a good meal covers all the bases. Protein, carbs, fat, flavor, balance. Nothing missing. Nothing in excess. Everything working together. I sometimes even challenge myself to get five colors on they plate (I told you, I'm very gay - rainbows everywhere).
But the longer I do this the more I think Well Rounded was always about more than the food.
When we made every recipe in this cookbook allergen free it was not just a practical decision. It was a values decision. Because the worst feeling in the world is showing up somewhere and realizing the food is not for you. That you have to sit at the table and watch everyone else eat or quietly make do with whatever happens to be safe. We have been that family. We know what it feels like to navigate a world that was not quite built with you in mind. Sometimes more than just at the dinner table.
So we built something different. Every recipe in the Well Rounded Meals cookbook is free from the top allergens because we genuinely mean it when we say everyone is welcome at our table. Not almost everyone. Not everyone except. Everyone. The food should never be the reason someone feels left out. Not in our kitchen.
That is what well rounded actually means. A meal where nothing is missing. A table where nobody is excluded. A life where you do not need a qualifier to belong.
A well rounded life looks like a family that does not fit a template and does not need to. It looks like a business that started from a marital miscommunication and somehow served 15,000 meals. It looks like two women who met in a doorway nineteen years ago and built something real together — a marriage, a family, a cookbook, a whole entire food business.
To My Queer Readers
Hi. I see you. I hope this made you smile. I hope you felt that little flash of recognition — the one I feel when I catch a glimpse of a queer couple in a commercial or read a story that reflects something of my own life back at me.
You are welcome here. You have always been welcome here. The kitchen does not care who you love or who you are and neither do I.
To Everyone Else
Thank you for being here. Thank you for letting me feed your families and clutter your inboxes and rant about the full moon and the end of school year chaos.
We are just a family. And this is just a food business. And I am really glad you found us.
Now let's get back to cooking. 🌿
Happy Eating,
Chef Susie