Today we’ll meet a lovely young lady with a desire to cook quality food (like the Rosemary Thyme Spread in the photo above) for her family of seven: her dad, mom, three sisters, one brother, and herself. She’s not only multi-talented and generous with those talents, but as a bonus, she also has quite the lovely name. Everyone, meet Erica.

Erica Lea Berge, or simply ericalea here at Tasty Kitchen, describes herself as “a twenty-year-old Christian home school graduate with a love for cooking and photographing food.” She’s being modest. One look at her blogs—her cooking blog at Cooking For Seven and her personal blog at Erica Lea—and you’ll see just how varied her skills are. She has posts about crafts, including knitting, sewing, and patterns. As someone who still can’t wrap her brain around the fact that two needles, some yarn, and time spent sitting on a comfy chair can produce a nice sweater or scarf, I was duly impressed.

Erica lives in Northern Minnesota, and loves very part of it, bitterly cold winters and all. She credits both her parents for influencing her in the kitchen. From her mother, she learned how to cook simple, comforting food without using a recipe. And her father helped instill in her a love for different, interesting flavors and the willingness to try something new. As you can see from her recipes, like the various soups and sides that she’s shared with us, the combination of simple and interesting is really a defining feature of her dishes.

Center photo: Sausage Potato Soup. Clockwise from top left: Maple Cornbread, Coconut Oil Potatoes, Thai Coconut Rice, and Creamy Butternut Squash Soup.

 
 
 
Erica insists that quality not only means that a dish is delicious, but it should also be nourishing as well. She says: “It is my belief that irresistibly scrumptious and healthy are not mutually exclusive.” (To see that belief in action, just look at the Whole Wheat Banana Nut Bread in the top left below, and the Maple Pecan Banana Cake below it, both made with whole wheat pastry flour.) That said, she is the also first to admit that she does also occasionally splurge and eat or cook something completely unhealthy. But for the most part, she tries to keep things natural and use whole foods as much as possible without obsessing about it, which is something she learned from her dad. Just look at her gorgeous Chocolate Almond Biscotti and Macadamia Nut Brownies below.

 
 
 
She and her younger sister run a small-scale cleaning service for individuals (mostly elderly, she adds) who live on their lake. When she’s not in the kitchen, she loves to read, ski, play the piano, talk with her sisters, and watch a good movie. Her photography, which is gorgeous, has slowly started bringing in some remuneration as well. (By the way, “remuneration” was her word, which scored major points with the hack writer putting this post together). Her creativity really shines through, I think, when you look at the different homemade ingredients and condiments in her recipe box.

Clockwise from top left: Homemade Pizza Sauce (which she never purchases from the store anymore), Pizza Dough (made from 100% whole wheat!), Smoky BBQ Sauce, Breakfast Sausage Spice Blend (she has a sweet version as well), and Whole Wheat Pasta.

 
 
 
In addition to seasoning blends to make your own breakfast sausage, Erica also has quite the healthy collection of breakfast recipes. From homemade granola to whole wheat muffins and baked oatmeal, her repertoire truly shows the care that she puts into preparing nutritious meals for the family.

Clockwise from top left: Surprise Muffins (use your favorite jam for the surprise!), Homemade Granola, Whole Wheat Apple Muffins, and a nice warm, hearty bowl of Fruit on the Bottom Baked Oatmeal.

 
 
Now let’s learn even more about this inspiring young lady, and ask Erica a few more questions.

 
 
Q: What do you enjoy most about cooking?
A: I love it when I change a recipe to make it healthier and nobody notices.

 
Q: Any favorite chefs or food celebrities? Who inspires you?
A: My grandma is the best cook I know. But my dad inspires me to try harder. He is my greatest critic.

 
Q: Complete the sentence: “I panic when I realize that I’m out of …”
A: Whole wheat flour or butter.

 
Q: Do you have a most memorable kitchen flop ever?
A: One Sunday, when company was over, we decided to make a quadruple batch of pudding. I inadvertently substituted baking powder for cornstarch and the result was absolutely disgusting. Not only did it smell terrible, it curdled into tiny yellow balls.

 
Q: What ingredient or technique/method gives you the most trouble?
A: Making pie. How does Grandma do it?

 
Q: What is your favorite kitchen tool?
A: Our new Henckels bread knife. It cuts like a dream. But the santoku is a close second.

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Thanks for answering our questions, Erica! You are quite the inspiring young lady. It’s such a joy to have you here!

 
To see more of Erica’s amazing recipes here at Tasty Kitchen, check out her recipe box. Maybe ogle the photos a bit. Then head on over to her blogs Cooking for Seven and Erica Lea for even more recipes, beautiful photographs, crafts, and everything else that she generously shares with everyone.

  If you’ve ever needed to search Tasty Kitchen for gluten free recipes and have been pleasantly surprised to see how gluten free eating can look so gosh darn mouthwatering (as in the case of the Double Chocolate Orange Torte pictured above), then chances are, you’re familiar with Elana’s recipes. And if you never thought […]