About Me

Hello there, my name is Amanda Hawkins, and I love many things.

I like to love them. That is probably the most insightful fact to know about me. I love practical things like my husband, things like: how to prune a plum tree or write query letter–things that bring me a little closer to using practically that which I love impractically… writing, cooking, baking, beauty. I cook when I’m stressed, not when it is time for dinner. I bake when there is no one around to eat the cake but me. I (would love to) write every day, starting at 5am and ending 3pm, without interruptions.

About one two years ago I finished my thesis: a short book of poetry called “Two Suns: Poems of Parallel Lands.” The poems explore the intersection of nature and spiritual experience within Vancouver, BC where I was studying, and Northern California, where I grew up and now live. The program was interdisciplinary, so I spent time in the realm of religion as well as art (for me: food, painting, and writing).

Around the same time I got pregnant. That means that now I have a kid. A baby boy born the summer of 2009. His name is Cedar. Cedar looks exactly like his dad (who also just happens to have been my beloved since I had braces), all lanky and sloped a bit at the shoulders. But he does have my eyes.

Before Cedar, any jobs I had were always somehow related to food (except for that odd year on the college maintenance crew…unclogging drains, replacing ballasts, painting dorms--at least I can say I tried). My first job in high school was at my favorite grocery store as a ‘courtesy clerk.’ My best friend and I used to go to that store's produce department for lunch just to look at their arrangements of veggies and fruit—gorgeous displays of herbs and greens, pyramids of apples, stacked rows of broccoli, exotic specialty items we’d dream of using one day like purple potatoes, passion fruit, and prickly pear. I chose that store job because I knew if life didn’t go my way, if I got stuck somehow in my high school job and had no choice but to keep keeping on there, I could at the very least be inspired every day. My soul would survive because even at its simplest, at its most basic and plain, food is beautiful.


But then so is my child. Beautiful, that is. And so is a breezy spring day. And so is a crazy hailstorm. I love food. I love writing. I love writing about food. But this blog began as a place to start--to jump in to the landscape of California and into the food that brought me back. There may be gardens in the future, or farm animals, there may be books of poetry and books of fiction. There may be another child. This blog continues because I am open to (and loving) the possibilities.