Cookpad Community Spotlight: Meet Sonia!

Cookpad is a recipe sharing app with a difference … we are a REAL community who cooks together regularly both online and offline. In this new feature we are going to meet the home cooks of Cookpad, starting with Sonia from our Cookpad community team.

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Hi everyone, I’m Sonia! 👋

If you use Cookpad to share your recipes then you hopefully are familiar with my name because I work within the UK community team and I am your first port of call if you get stuck or have any questions about cooking with us.

Cooking is a huge part of my life and I’m happiest when I’m in the kitchen. I cook at home everyday and I also cook in the Cookpad kitchen - both of which are located in Bristol, UK. I am married with two children and we live in a 200 year old cottage in a semi-rural village just outside of Bristol. We are a super busy family, the children are both in primary school and my husband and I work full time.

Many people don’t know this now, but I’m actually a biomedical scientist, I have 2 degrees in biomedical science and a specialist knowledge of haematology (the study of blood science). I used to work in an NHS hospital laboratory, then I moved into clinical publishing before getting heavily interested in nutrition and nutritional medicine. I wrote a healthy food blog on using food as medicine for several years before joining Cookpad, and I still have a great interest in using food for better long term health and wellness. I have a particular interest in the relationship of food and cancer, which began when my father was diagnosed with terminal stage 4 lung cancer in 2016.

You’ll see from my recipes that I love cooking with healthy food, and I have a weakness for ordering weird and unusual health foods from Amazon which then sit in my cupboard because I don’t know what to do with them …. if you’d like a huge bag of soya flour or some black lava salt then be my guest!

Having said all of that, I genuinely believe that life (and food) is all about balance. I share my own recipes on Cookpad because I love creating new dishes that I think contribute to good health, but one of the things I love most about Cookpad, is cooking other people's recipes. Bookmarking and cooking the recipes of other home cooks on Cookpad has really broadened my knowledge of cooking and my skill set. This is what has pushed me out of my comfort zone, allowing me to learn about other food cultures and new cooking techniques. This really makes me feel like I am growing and learning as a home cook.

The other thing I love the most about Cookpad is meeting other home cooks from all around the world. I care very deeply about our community here, so much so that I think of you all as my Cookpad family. I believe that no matter what our background or circumstance, our passion and love for cooking unites us all. I love that technology enables us to cook with our community both offline and online, so that we can learn and grow together. Cookpad is unique in this aspect, we genuinely want more people to connect and cook together for fun, wellness and happiness. This brings me great personal joy and I want everyone else to experience it too, which is why I am so passionate about our community work.

You can find me on Cookpad here.

P.s. If you live near Bristol then please ask me how you can come and cook with us because I would love to meet you! I can be contacted via the app, or at sonia-nicholas@cookpad.com