How This (Completely Healthy) Food Blogger Has Her Cake and Eats It, Too
The blogger behind Eat in My Kitchen, Meike Peters, poses in her kitchen. All photos courtesy of Meike Peters.
Three or four times a week, Meike Peters sits down with a cup of tea and eats a slice of cake. Or pie, or cobbler. This week, it was a simple apricot tart topped with a cinnamon crumble, which Peters’s boyfriend quickly declared the best dessert she’d ever made. “I’ve learned not to take him too seriously,” Peters told us. “Because he says that quite often.”
Peters is the force behind Eat in My Kitchen, a recipe blog that documents her life in Berlin, Germany. It’s filled with cookies, cakes, and other sweets, a reflection of the way Peters thinks about food: it’s meant to be enjoyed. “Luckily I’m quite tall — almost six feet — so I can eat a lot,” she admitted. “People always as me, ‘How can do you do that? Eat so much cake and pasta and cheese?’ I love cheese.”
That said, it’s not all about indulgence for Peters. She eats meat only once a week, and fish about twice that. The rest of her diet is mainly vegetables, eggs, and pastas, and she takes pains to purchase the highest quality ingredients. Eating this way helps her achieve balance, which she believes is the key.
Peters’s olive oil bundt cake with orange icing.
“I don’t understand why people put so much pressure on themselves — eat a small piece of cake instead of a big piece!” she said. But at the end of the day, she’s not worried about a few extra pounds. “In summer, we all want to wear bikinis,” Peters admitted. “But if there’s a nice cake in front of me…”
Beyond cake, Peters’s food is a tapestry of the many influences in her life: there are Maltese-inspired dishes picked up from her boyfriend, whose mother is from the Mediterranean archipelago of Malta. Its food is a cross between Sicilian and Mediterranean cuisines, rich with pasta-filled frittatas and meat-stuffed vegetables.
There are also international flourishes from her worldly group of expat friends in Berlin — Thai mango salads and Korean bibimbap, to name a couple — which also explain why Peters’s blog is written in English. (It’s the language everyone shares.) Then, of course, there are dishes derived from her German upbringing in Cologne, from poppy seed strudel to potato dumplings.
Green beans and peas with tahini lemon mayonnaise and basil.
Eat in My Kitchen has been around since late 2013, when Peters decided her life needed a jumpstart. At the time, she was working at a music label she’d co-founded, composing lyrics and melodies for commercial projects in addition to representing local artists. But the music business is a rough game, and Peters wanted out. Several of her friends, impressed by her regular dinner parties, suggested she start a blog. So she did — and quit her job, to boot.
“I’m really quick with decisions,” Peters said of the rapid change. “Once I decide something, I go for it. In the beginning, I still did some small music jobs on the side. But pretty quickly, I got photography jobs. I got great feedback from the press straight away, which surprised me. I was really lucky.”
Maltese pasta frittata with spicy green pesto.
These days, Peters works on Eat in My Kitchen full-time. She’s also toiling away on a cookbook inspired by the blog, to be published in fall of 2016. But beyond that, she doesn’t know what the future will bring. Nor does she want to.
“I don’t really plan my life, though I’m extremely happy for here and now,” she explained. “It’s been an amazing year, and I’m just very thankful for everything that’s happened.“
More bloggers who should be on your radar:
Why getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to this food blogger
How a 20-year friendship blossomed into a gorgeous food blog
Meet the male food blogger who’s all about feminism
Who’s your favorite food blogger? Tell us below!