“I tasted what I had made and it was terrible. I began to cry right there over the pot.”

This is something that truly happened to me at one point in my life. The “simple” act of cooking? Not as easy as it looks, there are so many variables that go into creating a meal for yourself or even a group of friends. The decorating part has always come so naturally to me and the cooking aspect was and continues to be a learning process for me. 

At Home with Lavin is a mish-mosh lifestyle website where I’ll show you things like, great recipes that I have tried and my friends & family have loved. I’ll also show you what I usually do in my own space or the event I am having guests over for a meal. What to cook, how to cook, and how to prepare for it. I’ll also share with you my favorite things at the moment…yes as Oprah does. Here’s a little timeline of how this all came about:

My love of cooking started a lot earlier than I thought. When I was a young boy I used to watch my mom cook in the kitchen for hours. She made most things homemade for us which was incredible to watch. She would taste as she would go, and come up with the most delicious tasting food - some of it made up and some of it by recipe. One day it would be tangy spiced chicken enchiladas, refried beans, and sopapillas inspired by my grandfather's Mexican heritage. Then the next meal would be collard greens, red beans & rice, and fried chicken inspired by my father's Southern black roots. My mother was definitely the top cook in our family. People still talk about her cooking! She passed right after my 18th birthday. I had already left the nest for college and I had not grown an appreciation for cooking quite yet, but it was there in my DNA just waiting to be rediscovered. Like some people, I was a terrible cook at the beginning and quite frankly I still screw things up here and there. But that’s the beauty of being human - you learn as you go.

It was when I moved to Los Angeles in 2009 that I unexpectedly learned how to actually cook and appreciate food. My relocation to LA was for a job with Ralph Lauren. They had just opened the most exquisite store in West Hollywood in the Robertson shopping district. I met my neighbor Lori from across the hall in our Koreatown apartment building. She was a mother of two twenty-somethings like myself who had left their nest as well. She was friendly and so inviting. The defining night was when I had just spent my last little amount of money to make a meal that I could stretch out for the next couple of days till payday. I tasted what I had made and it was the most horrible tasting thing ever! I began to cry right there over the pot. The next day I told Lori what had happened. She invited me into her home and brought me into her kitchen. She had every single type of pot, utensil, and ingredient. You name it, she had it. I mean seriously, onion goggles!? She told me to look up and there on a shelf above her cabinets were over 50 cookbooks and that wasn’t even the half of it. The rest were in a vintage armoire in her red wine colored living room along with binders of her tried and true recipes collected over the years, organized and labeled. From that moment on I went over every week and learned at least 2 new recipes. Being in the kitchen with Lori felt like being in the kitchen with my mother.

Meanwhile, I continued my work with Ralph Lauren doing in-store merchandising displays and working part-time with the coolest interior decorator in Los Angeles, Mary McDonald. This is where my love of aesthetics and presentation flourished. At Ralph Lauren, I was a merchandiser that did a lot of decorating and staging of the merchandise throughout the store and created “niche moments” in vitrines. With this training, I learned color, texture, and size balance. Making things look appealing was a part of the job. I loved what I was doing so much that I started using some of those same practices in my home. During this period I was having a blast hosting dinner/brunch/cocktail parties for my friends, family, and lucky roommates. I quickly got a reputation as the guest who would happily show up early to help the busy host prep the party. It wasn’t long before my friends & family members encouraged me to create a platform where I could share my thoughts and ideas about being a gracious host, cooking delicious food, and setting the stage for a wonderful gathering.

Welcome to At Home with Lavin.

Now let’s get this party started!