Origin Story
Growing up in the suburbs of New York City, you are surrounded by amazing food everywhere, but nothing beats homemade cooking from recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation.
Here is where the problem comes in: THESE RECIPES ARE NOT WRITTEN DOWN! They are instilled in the brains of their creators and proteges who can cook these dishes in their sleep! They can cook these meals based on feel, smell, and most of all, hand measurements.
Helping Hands Kitchen is inspired by these recipes. Perfect homemade dishes that have been passed down by friends and family, but with one catch: NO RECIPE. The idea for this blog came to us when we asked a friend of ours for their family’s amazing Italian Meatball recipe. He told us he did not have anything written down, he just uses his hands to measure everything. This sparked an idea. What if he could send us photos of his hands holding different ingredients for the meatballs – and that’s what he did. He sent us photos of just his hands showing us his measurements for each ingredient.
We followed his instructions, using his hands as our guides and to our surprise, the meatballs came out so good! We have made this recipe several times now and it is now a staple in our house.
The Helping Hands Team
Anyways, now that you know the origins behind Helping Hands Kitchen, let us tell you all a bit more about ourselves. We are Chris and Rachel, a husband and wife duo who love good food and cooking. Chris is originally from Long Island and Rachel grew up in Westchester county. In 2019, we moved to Florida to escape the cold and high home prices. We really love the warmer weather although we could both do without the crazy humidity in the summers.
Even though neither one of us really misses the New York hustle and bustle, we really do miss all the great food options. The area of Florida we live in has a lot of chain restaurants, fast food, and don’t even get us started on the soft bread.
Good Italian food is one of those hard-to-find things down here. The grocery stores have very limited fresh pasta and bread options while the restaurants and pizza places are just ok. We still have yet to find a traditional Italian bakery to satisfy our cannoli cravings.
Don’t worry though, we have still managed to find amazing food options down here and things that we can’t find, we try to make at home.