Where It All Began….

I haven’t had a chance to share my story of where all of this Spicy Grasshopper business began, and it’s about time we got to know one another, so here goes!

For those who haven’t met me, I’m Sophia Lin Kanno, aka The Spicy Grasshopper, a zero-waste minded, budget sensitive chef. I focus on helping people to find secondary uses for leftover food while all being mindful of budget at the same time. I’m passionate about the environment, but also incredibly passionate about helping people find their confidence in the kitchen to become more sustainable and realize the power they have in their own hands to make a different to our earth and our enviornrments.

My parents were immigrants from Taiwan that landed in guess where, Snellville, GA. Yeah, what a difference right? While Snellville might be the strip mall capital of Metro Atlanta now, but back in the day, it was out there, off Hwy 78, which was kind of a highway, but not really. It took my parents saving up every penny they had to buy their first home, just off a gravel road that wasn’t even paved when they first moved in. Because where we were located was about 45 minutes away from the closest international grocery store and finances being tight, they started to build their own garden on their little .75 acre property.

It started from missing the Asian vegetables that weren’t prevalent in the Kroger and Piggy Wiggly grocery stores in Georgia, the Chinese chives, sweet potato leaves, luffa squash and Thai chili peppers. While the green beans, iceberg lettuce and broccoli were great supplements to our meals, nothing really beat the organic vegetables that we’d get from my parents’ garden. There were definitely weeks where we ate SO MANY Chinese chives, with eggs, with tomatoes, in dumplings, with pork, oh man I was sick of it, but there was something incredible about the innovation and ingenuity of it all. We never went hungry and we didn’t eat processed crap foods, well we eventually did have some, but for the most part, we were well feed with nutritious fresh food. Even more so, my parents didn’t have all the right tools to build a proper garden, with the fancy caged fencing or stakes, they were creative, they were resourceful and scrappy. They used old window screens to fence off the garden, old wooden planks from an abandoned home site and rewired things together with dry cleaning hangers for security. They cut open gallon milk jugs and juice cartons for freezing and planting seedlings, using every possible thing within their reach to save and scrap for their family.

I didn’t know it then, in fact, I was embarrassed of my parents, their frugality, the scrappiness and their use of “trash” in our daily lives, but I realized many years later, these experiences were the foundation of my unique perspective on creativity and resourcefulness. I couldn’t have known it then and certainly as a child, I didn’t have the appreciation for it. Today, I take saving food and reducing food waste far beyond what even my parents taught me, making my own stocks from scratch, pickling my own watermelon rinds and even frying eggs in remanent prime rib fat.

It’s funny because for the longest time, I didn’t want to be this person, the person that saved everything, but I always kept seeing my parents in my mind, asking the question, “What else can I use this for? What second life can this item give or live?” Eventually, I gave in and realized, this upbringing is a part of me, a part of the DNA and makeup of who I am. I’ve embraced it and it’s made me even more proud of the person and the brand I represent. I welcome you to join me in this journey I’m taking to revolutionize the food world, one old slice of bread and garlic skin at a time.