Like many of you, I've been doing a lot of cooking throughout 4 months of sheltering in place and self-quarantining. This Buddha Bowl with Sesame Marinated Tofu is one of my best recipes from this time, although I'll be sharing a few more of my quarantine-cooking favorites. I just love how beautiful this one turned out and it was equally beautiful to eat...I literally couldn't stop. I'll give you a little background on how it came to be...

I never had “baby fever” but in my late 30’s I knew with certainty that I wanted to be a mom. (Fyi, I'm 41 now.) For me, that was all I needed to know to make it a reality but there were some issues I still had to work through, and I was far from ready to plunge into baby making.

My life before the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic hit the US was literally non-stop travel from December to early March. I definitely saw a lot of people at the airport wearing respirators and disinfecting their seats on the plane, but it really never occurred to me that soon we’d all be in a state of lockdown. The face masks, at the time, seemed a bit much to me. I was conscientiously using hand sanitizer and wiping down my seat too, but I was 100% clueless about what was to come next. And you know what? I’m thankful for my blissful ignorance…because who knows when I’ll be traveling next!

I posted this video I made on instagram today and it all just felt right to say. These are tough times but we are finding our way through it. I'm so proud of my city, my country and all of you. We're going to get through this....

First, I really want to give a heartfelt THANKS to WUSA-9 in Washington DC and host Ellen Bryan for having me Skype-in to their show.

What a story this is! Trust me, I never imagined I would fly across the country and come back so changed. I fly to LA a lot these days, mostly for TV appearances or influencer related events, so when I decided to partner with Pure Farmland and join their influencer retreat, I had somewhat of an idea in my head about how it would go. Part of the retreat experience included going to Food Expo West, which was supposed to happen in Anaheim. But literally 24 hours before I landed in California, it was cancelled due to the outbreak of coronavirus (a.k.a. COVID-19) in the US.