Welcome!

Phoebe Bites is a blog created and maintained by me, Erica Shen.  It chronicles my culinary adventure in the Inland Empire, a region in southern California that I call home. Here, you will find recipes inspired by my travels, family and friends and cookbook collection, as well as interesting tidbits about food, health and the environment.

My food philosophy

I am on a mostly plant-based diet with lots of vegetables, grains and beans.  As you will see in the blog entries, I do eat seafood and humanely-raised meat on occasion.  I like simple food made from local and natural ingredients.  I am wary of food that contain ingredients I can’t pronounce.  Although there’s nothing wrong with store-bought items, I find it rewarding and even therapeutic to make things from scratch.  There is nothing like watching homemade bread rise in the oven on a Sunday afternoon.

My life outside of food

I was reporter for a daily newspaper before I was laid off.  I had been cooking and thinking about starting a blog for a while, and it seemed like the perfect time to start when I lost my job.  Now I work for a small weekly paper in my town and spend my free time cooking, eating and blogging.  I live with my husband, Nick, also known as the official taste tester and dish washer for this blog’s projects.  We share a home with two chinchillas, five chickens, a small terrier mix and a fluffy white mutt, Phoebe, who is the namesake for this Web site.