Emily Reno is deeply passionate about food. She comes from a family connected to food, growing up with a mom with impeccably high home cooking standards, along with a sister who went to culinary school, demonstrates how passion for food is a family affair. “Most of how I’ve connected with my Mexican culture I learned through the food that my mom cooked and that is from the three months she lived in Mexico with my Dad.” Like her mom’s interest in Latin American foods, Emily loves to explore the region’s ethnic groceries stores, from Pelican Rapids’ Mariposa Market to the Lotus Blossom in Fargo for inspiration in her kitchen. Having lived in Minneapolis for graduate school, she began visiting Halal Markets and Asian groceries to get supplies for food that grounds her sensibilities of engaging cuisines from around the world. In her recent cooking journey she’s been drawn to plantains and other Caribbean fruits and vegetables as a way to remind her of recent travel to Costa Rica. As a rural resident (living in Dent during this interview), she knows the value of multitasking, which results in her always stopping at a grocery to get her food supplies whenever she drives to town. Paired with the grocery list she keeps updated on her phone, Emily is purposeful about the foods she makes. She loves trying out new recipes and feeding her friends and family, a tradition she brings with her from college where every Sunday she would cook for the family and push herself to try cooking new recipes. Striving for excellence is definitely her approach, and she’s always aiming to get her family’s coveted “company food”* label from anyone enjoying her culinary creations. “Food is a way that I can express my gratitude for other people,” and what a gift Emily’s love of sharing food brings to the community. Ask Emily about food and you will be treated to a feast for your ears, her description of her favorite foods to make and eat serves as a beautiful soundtrack that is sure to make any listener hungry. An energetic eater, meaning she tunes into her body about what she is hungry for, Emily is deeply connected to how food can bring simple pleasures and change one’s worldview. She sees the “unlimited potential for using food as a means to communicate” as a basis for her home cook menu planning and dreams of farming and creating a small business with the goal of connecting people to the foods she grows. For anyone out there who is afraid to try others’ foods, she really wants to encourage people to get out there and support small businesses, she believes in the power of food to start conversations, and change the world.