COOKS at home
ONE BALANCED LIFE
Taylor Dadds Keeps it Simple, Tasty, Healthy and Fun
I
by NATHAN MATISSE t’s a dreadful situation many of us are all too familiar with: After
With that, @OneBalancedLife was born and would eventually become
an eight-hour workday that somehow felt like 18, the last thing
Dadds’ popular website and handle. And although she claims the journey,
you can think about is cooking. Taylor Dadds knows this feeling
as any can, began a bit rocky, those who visit her pages are greeted by a
well. Back in 2016, Dadds was working in marketing in the Dallas area,
visual feast no matter how far back they scroll. Wallpaper-worthy grain
regularly “drained at work in a job I didn’t love,” she recalls. “No one then
bowls, brightly colored fruits and vegetables, desserts that demand a
wants to come home and be like, ‘What am I going to make for dinner?’”
second look — it’s an eyeful visitors will quickly want to turn into a mouthful. And as Dadds has recently demonstrated for Edible Austin,
Yet rather than allowing professional exhaustion to paralyze her at
that’s the point. She wants to show everyone who comes across her
dinnertime, Dadds began to find that very moment to be what kept
recipes that anyone can do it themselves.
her going. She moved to Austin in 2018 for a new job and to be closer to family, and then she got into meal planning, prepping the kind of meals she wanted to
eat
in
straightforward,
easy-to-reheat ways so that the transition from office to (microwave)
oven
could
happen in an instant. She also started
challenging
herself
to continually improve in the kitchen, finding inspiration in anything from ingredients she loved to restaurant meals she dreamt about in order to
“I always want people to feel like, when they come to my page, they can make whatever I share. It shouldn’t feel complicated or super gourmet, even if it might look that way because of the way I’ve plated something,” she says. “People can easily make this stuff in their own house, and that’s one of my biggest focuses whenever I create. I want recipes to be simple and for everyone to feel like they can make them at home.” Dadds’ shrimp tostadas with pineapple salsa, for instance, sound and look fancy, but they’re quite manageable in practice. She starts with premade corn tortillas and notes how effortless it would be to swap in a premade salsa or an easier-to-prepare protein (like chicken or chickpeas). You can tailor the recipe to be ready in 10, 20 or 30 minutes depending on your needs and tastes. (You’ll likely want to taste her pineapple salsa, though, as its fresh and bright produce components
routinely make different things at home.
really hit the spot during an Austin summer.) And her southwestern
Beyond this new habit in the kitchen, the thing that eventually changed
peppers and onions, canned black beans — that are easy to make at
Dadds’ life was the fact that she documented the process online, too.
scale so you can then freeze them for quick on-the-go meal options. “It’s
breakfast burritos build off basic ingredients — scrambled eggs, fresh
something I’ve done really since college — the process of cooking for
“I started using my Instagram feed as a passion project,” Dadds says. “I
myself and wondering, ‘How can I make it easier?’” Dadds says.
enjoyed cooking, I followed a lot of people on Instagram who did similar things. So I was like, ‘I’ll just start sharing my food on Instagram with
The chocolate covered banana bites may be the crowd favorite, however
this page.’ My focus was on healthy eating and simple recipes, kind of
(in fairness, probably because of “chocolate”). The recipe is simple
weaving in wellness and fitness as well. That’s what I was passionate about.”
enough to fit in an Instagram caption and the resulting treat is freezer
18 / EdibleAustin.com
photos by RALPH YZNAGA
