Meet Aimée

Bonjour! And bienvenue.

My name is Aimée Wimbush-Bourque, and I’m the editor and writer around here.

I do the cooking for our close-knit family of four, my husband and high school sweetheart, Danny, me, and our two sons, Noah, 5, and Mateo, 3.

All photos by Tim Chin

We’ve just settled on a third of an acre of land that backs onto a maple forest just outside of Montréal, Canada. We are looking forward to putting in a big garden, raising a few chickens and perhaps someday building an outdoor pizza oven.

We’ve also got a baby on the way! One more thing that we are ‘growing’ on our urban homestead…

A ‘real food’ upbringing

Cooking has always been my preferred recreational activity, creative outlet, and source of relaxation. My biggest inspiration is my mother, who was about 30 years ahead of the recent “real food” movement. She and my father homeschooled us four kids and raised most of our own food, which gave me ample ‘Little House on the Prairie’ opportunities as a little girl. Milking goats, collecting eggs, hauling wood, and baking bread were just a few of my daily activities.

That rural upbringing on Canada’s West Coast instilled a permanent connection to nature and the simple things in life like camping trips, mushroom foraging and pulling carrots from the kitchen garden. Even though we lived remotely, I was not overly sheltered and was always encouraged to follow my heart.

At age 20 I ate my way around the world, was bitten by the travel bug and have now visited a total of eighteen countries on four continents. My heart then led me to Quebec, where I now call home, to follow a certain bright-eyed engineering student, to whom I am now happily married.

From Restaurants to RSS

Before the kids arrived, I went to culinary school, which led to several years of cooking in fine-dining establishments, and lastly, I dabbled in catering and some personal chef work.

After falling in love with motherhood and wanting to stay at home with my babies, and after nearly ten years in the professional cooking industry, I traded my tongs and chef whites for cloth diapers and a laptop, and married my two passions by becoming a food/mommy blogger.

Not surprisingly, I’m much busier as a home manager and blogger than I ever was in the fine-dining industry – and happier, too! I’m a big advocate of kids in the kitchen and encourage them to be creative and have fun with food.

Life today

I could never cook without good quality spices, olive oil and sea salt, I could never function without dark roast coffee or homemade cookies, and I don’t take for granted how fortunate I am to be able to cook and write for a living – all out of the comforts of my own home.

For that I thank YOU, the reader. I feel honored and humbled daily that each one of you take the times to visit my little corner.

Curious about the other people who write on this site? They’re fantastic and hand-picked by me for the job. Here they are.

And would you like to know more about Simple Living Media? Head here. Where have we been mentioned? Head here.

Want to contact me? Head here. I wish I had more time to write you back, but please know I read every email that comes my way.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter, or ‘like’ this blog on Facebook. I love chatting with everyone on the Simple Bites FB page and probably hang out there more often than I should (oh my poor neglected house!).

Want to tour my kitchen? Read an exclusive interview on blogging, motherhood and food? Catch my conversations with friends over on The Kitchen Generation?

Want to meet up? I’ll be at BlogHer Food ’11 in May! Later on in the summer, I’m attending Big Summer Potluck, and in the fall, I’m registered for Blissdom Canada.  I hope to connect sometime soon.

Thanks for stopping by!