Hello and welcome! My name is Alex and I am the creator of The New Baguette. My goal with this site is to promote wellness through food – to inspire you to cook more at home and incorporate more vibrant, plant-based meals into your life.
I fell in love with cooking as soon as I grew tall enough to see the top of the stove. Some of my earliest memories are of helping my mom make varenyky (Ukrainian dumplings) in our tiny Odessa kitchen. When I was nine years old, my family immigrated from Ukraine to America, where I quickly discovered the Food Network. Rachael, Giada and Ina soon became my best friends and I would run home after school every day to watch them do their thing on TV.
As a teenager, my relationship with food became a little more complicated: I loved food and eating, but often found myself feeling guilty about it. I was obsessed with body image, and started counting calories and exercising a lot (with the mindset that I had to penalize myself for eating). I struggled with finding a way to eat that felt right for me and diet advice from TV doctors and magazines only made matters worse.
It wasn’t until I discovered Kris Carr’s book Crazy Sexy Diet that my mindset changed. I learned there is an undeniable connection between food and health, and my focus shifted from unrealistic beauty standards to doing what’s best for my body and mind. I also realized the answer to feeling great wasn’t in doing trendy workout, cutting out carbs, or eating less calories—it was in eating lots of plant-based whole foods, eliminating processed food, and reducing the amount of animal products I was eating.
Cooking and sharing nourishing food is my work, my hobby, and my life’s passion. Cooking brings me a tremendous amount of joy and my goal is to help others feel that same satisfaction, too.
Why “The New Baguette”? A baguette is considered a given during almost every meal in France. For me, The New Baguette represents more wholesome, nutritious, vibrant foods that I hope will become staples on more tables everywhere. The baguette is also a convenience food—oftentimes in Paris, you’ll see people walking down the street with a baguette under their arm, tearing off small bits and eating them on the go. So, The New Baguette is a symbol of a modern way of eating that looks beyond convenience to ask what are we eating and how is it effecting us? (Admittedly, I’m also a diehard francophile and wanted to pay homage to my favorite culture.)
A bit about me and the blog: I started my first food blog in 2009 while studying English Literature in college. It was the perfect way to combine my passions for food, writing, and photography. My first job out of college was at NYC’s Natural Gourmet Institute, where I finally got to utilize my foodie skills on a professional level. It was there that I also learned the art of plant-based cooking, holistic nutrition, and food sustainability. Since 2017, I’ve been a “solopreneur” – apart from writing this blog, I also work as a recipe developer, food writer, food photographer, and food photography instructor. Learn more about what I do via my creative studio, TNB Atelier. I live in New York with my boyfriend, Rene, and our cat friend, Fred.
Press and other published work:
Headshots by Michelle Fidman
Logo design by Yevgeniya Ryaboy
