About

Welcome. This is Conscious Plate, a small site I write on my own about mindful, plant-forward eating, at home and when I am out. I'm Rosa Quintanilla. I am not a chef and I have never worked a service in my life. I am a cook with a domestic kitchen, one decent knife, and a strong opinion about not crowding the roasting tray.

I came to food through wellness, which I mention because it explains the double vision. I spent a few years teaching people rules about eating, and I now think most of those rules were wrong, or at least wrong in the way they were held. What survived is smaller and far more useful: cook when you can, let the season decide, put the vegetables in the middle, sit down, and eat with other people whenever the chance appears. The rest was mostly vocabulary.

What you will find here is one person's notes. Some of it is technique, some of it is argument, and a fair amount is me working out in public why one plate was memorable and another was not. There is no program and no correct way to eat. Just attention, which is free, and which turns out to be most of it.