Who Am I?
My name is Sam and I’m the recipe developer and food photographer of Freezer to Air Fryer and another blog called Smack of Flavor. I live with my partner and our dog in Massachusetts, USA. I’m in my 30’s and I work as a chemist during the day doing environmental testing.
At night I like to be in the kitchen cooking, watching the Red Sox (hopefully) win and sharing my love of food with people on the internet. I’ve been disabled since about 2008 and I’ve had multiple back surgeries which leaves me with lower extremity weakness and numbness. I’m also neurodivergent in a world that is not always neurodivergent friendly.
My coworker, Phoenix the rescue husky mix, keeps me company just outside the kitchen, helps me write blog posts and is always eager to be a taste tester (she’s a big fan of cheese). My partner is a mostly willing taste tester and often is an enabler when I ask “do I need to add more cheese?”
Why Trust Me?
All recipes have been tested by me multiple times and I try to include plenty of details to help cooks of all skill levels. While I can’t control for all variables especially since different products are available in different locations and different air fryers behave differently, I do want you to have success. I don’t want you to waste food because it came out gross. But please, if I’ve missed something or you need more details, feel free to reach out and ask.
I have always enjoyed being in the kitchen and creating food that I love for people. My love language is feeding people flavorful food. I started this blog in 2023 to share my recipes and talk about air fryers as much as possible.
I love my air fryer. So much. I don’t think you can understand how much I love my air fryer. I talk about it all the time. I use it all the time. It’s constantly on the kitchen counter and I love finding new items to cook in it.
Authority
I already have another food blog that has delicious and popular air fryer recipes. These recipes are typically a bit more involved and definitely require some more time and energy in the kitchen. I love these recipes, I wouldn’t put them into the world if I didn’t love them. However, there are days, weeks and months where I just don’t have the time or energy to make those recipes.
There are so many valid reasons why someone might not have enough energy, time or money to cook everything from scratch all the time. I don’t see enough recipes that have those constraints in mind but are also exciting to me. I don’t see enough recipes that have neurodivergent, disabled, low income, single person, single parents, no child couples in mind. I am not all of those things, but I think these recipes can help a lot of people be more excited about what they are eating and cooking.
I wanted to be a space that makes recipes more accessible. Frozen food is accessible since it lasts a long time. When food doesn’t go bad quickly, you save money and never run into the “oh no the main ingredient has gone bad” problem. Frozen vegetables, prepared meals and proteins are also typically cheaper than their fresh counterparts. They have great quality and are often a better option when ingredients aren’t in season or locally available. Frozen seafood makes seafood accessible to people hundreds of miles from the ocean!
I believe air fryers make cooking more accessible. They are mostly: set it and forget it and turn off automatically. This means that if you have memory problems, you’re not worried about something burning in the oven. It means that if you have a hard time standing over a stove for 10 minutes (Hi, hello it’s me a lot of days), you can set the air fryer up and let it cook while you rest.
It also means that if you don’t have a lot of spoons that day because your day was hectic, you can still feed yourself because there are just less steps involved. Air fryers are small enough that if you’re only cooking for 1 or 2, you’re not heating up the whole oven.
I can’t solve for every hardship but I think frozen food in the air fryer can make cooking a lot more exciting than in the microwave and more accessible than some foods in the oven or stove. I have a hard time bending over sometimes so the oven can be inaccessible to me. Other times I can’t stand long enough to constantly flip food while it sizzles in the oil.
Things I Love
- Cheese: specifically a nice aged gouda.
- Baseball: I love nothing more than cooking on a Sunday and yelling at the Red Sox
- Fall: It’s my favorite season. If you’ve never experienced a New England fall, you need to
- Feeding people: The ultimate reason why I love to cook so much is because it brings me great joy when someone enjoys something I’ve made.
- Audiobooks: I found that I can read more book if I just listen to them faster and all the time. So many books, so little time.
Things I Hate
- Celery: It’s weird stringy water.
- People shaming: Don't yuck someone else's yum! Just because you wouldn't eat it, doesn't mean it's bad or gross or wrong. Just move along.
- New York Yankees: I won't apologize for this but I'll still like you even if you root for them.
- Extra fluff: I’m all about efficiency and providing details about a recipe to help you, the reader, cook it well. You’re reading the recipe to make the recipe, not to learn about how much this pesto recipe reminds me of my grandma.
Come Say Hi!
You can connect with me on social media or e-mail me directly at freezertoairfryer(at)gmail(dot)com
Please join our discord server called The Cheese Cave where we share recipes, meal plans, ask for help with how to use ingredients and share kitchen tips. It's a lot of fun! It's basically like the most organized ever group chat with a bunch of people who just wanna talk about food all the time.
You can follow me on Instagram where I share on stories about the recipes I’m testing, foods I’m loving or just my day to day life in the kitchen. Come say hi!
Thank you for coming to say hi. I hope you learn something from new from my recipes and get to share them with your favorite people.
Updated January 30, 2023