Hi, I'm Aqueena. Yes, that really is my name.
I'm a farm wife and mom to two boys, and I farm with my husband Alexander on a mixed grain and cattle farm in East Central Alberta, Canada. We raise beef and lamb and grow oats, wheat, barley and canola. Every recipe on this site has been cooked in a real farm kitchen, eaten by a real crew, and usually made twice more before I was happy enough to share it.
Where I learned to cook
I grew up on a grain farm in Northern Alberta in a family of ten. Of the eight kids, I'm the oldest girl, which meant helping my mom cook for a crowd was just a normal day. For a few months every year those meals went out to the field in coolers and slow cookers, timed around whoever was on the combine. That is where I learned the two things this site is built on: food has to be simple enough to make on a busy day, and it has to actually taste good when it gets there.
I've worked in agriculture sales, marketing and management for the past 15 years, and along the way I've cooked and delivered a lot of meals to customers and crews. Our own farm crew is smaller now, but harvest still means meals in the field, and I still think about food from sun up to sun down.
How Aqueena The Kitchen started
It began as an Instagram account to follow other food lovers. Then I started posting my own cooking as a kind of digital recipe book, and things got out of hand in the best way. While on maternity leave I taught myself to build the website, write recipes properly, shoot the photos and figure out SEO. That new skill set ended up shaping my career too: today I'm Chief Strategy Officer at Taurus Agricultural Marketing, which means the blog has taken a backseat to work, farming and, above all, being a mom to two boys who are now 6 and 7.
The recipes are still here, they still work, and they're still the ones we eat.
What you'll find here
- Everyday recipes with common ingredients. Nothing you have to drive to the city for. If it isn't in a small-town grocery store, it isn't in my recipes.
- Food that travels. Field meals, freezer meals, sheet pan suppers and things that hold up in a lunch kit or a tractor cab.
- Prairie comfort food. Lazy cabbage rolls, puffed wheat squares, homemade bread and the roasts we actually buy, like cross rib roast.
- Pellet grill cooking. We cook on a Traeger Pro 780, so you'll find brisket, ribs, smoked pizza and everything in between.
- Homemade baking. Buns, cinnamon buns, cookies (including a few copycats) and squares for the Christmas tray.
How I test recipes
Every recipe is made in my own kitchen with ingredients from our local grocery store, cooked in a regular home oven or on our pellet grill, and fed to my family and crew before it goes up. I write down exact amounts, times and temperatures as I go, and I note the things that went wrong the first time so you can skip them. If you have a question about a recipe, ask in the comments and I'll answer it.
Say hi
I love hearing that someone made a recipe and their family liked it. Tag @aqueenathekitchen on Instagram when you do, leave a star rating on the recipe card, or send a note to [email protected]. You can also keep in touch here.
And yes, the ads can be a bit annoying. They're a small way of paying for the time that goes into creating and maintaining these recipes, and I appreciate you putting up with them.
Thank you for being here.
Aqueena
