I grew up around Sunday meals in a small Midwestern town. A pot on the stove, a casserole in the oven, bread on the counter, and someone always pulling up another chair. When I became vegan in my twenties, the first thing I lost was that Sunday-table feeling. The second thing I lost, and this is the one I want to talk about, was the permission to cook generously without a reason.
Leuchi started in 2021 as a small Sunday newsletter for the people in my life who had asked me, one too many times, what I was eating for dinner. It is still, mostly, that. A long letter once a month, a handful of essays each season, and a quiet promise: if you came to Leuchi for a recipe, you should leave with something you can actually cook tonight.
I am not a chef and I have never worked in a restaurant. I am a home cook who got tired of recipes that fell apart the moment a real Tuesday got in the way. So I started writing down only the things that survived contact with a busy life: the tofu method that crisps every time, the dinners that reheat well, the routines that did not need willpower to keep. Everything here has been tested in the same small kitchen, usually more than three times, before it earns a page. When something fails, I say so. That is the whole editorial standard.
People sometimes ask why the tone is so calm when food writing online tends to shout. The honest answer is that I write the site I needed when I went vegan and felt like I had to perform health to deserve a plate. I did not. Neither do you. Comfort and nutrition are not enemies, and a good week is built from small, repeatable things rather than dramatic overhauls. I would rather give you one clear next step than a list of forty.
What you will find here
Four rooms: recipes, wellness, lifestyle, and travel. Each room has one anchor essay (a "pillar") and a small family of pieces that branch off it. The pieces link to each other when they actually help, not because someone told me to do SEO.
How I write
Slowly, mostly by hand, in a notebook before the laptop. I edit out at least one paragraph per essay that I liked too much. I keep my opinions; I cut my certainties.
The middle is what I am aiming for: warm enough to feel human, specific enough to be useful, calm enough to leave you with one next step instead of a pile of pressure.
Contact
Email me at hello [at] leuchi [dot] com. I read every note. I usually reply within a week, slower in summer. For press, please put "press" in the subject line. If your mail client does not open, just type the address shown into a new message.
What I believe about food
A few things I keep coming back to. Plants can be the centre of a plate, not a garnish on the side of one. Protein is a real concern and a solvable one, which is why I write about it plainly instead of pretending it does not matter. Cooking is a skill you build, not a talent you are born with, so most of my recipes are really methods in disguise. And pleasure is not the opposite of health. The meals I trust most are the ones I would happily cook for someone who eats meat without announcing that they are vegan at all.
I also believe in being honest about limits. I write about wellness because the small routines genuinely help my weeks, but I am not a medical professional, and I will always point you to a qualified source when a question is about your body rather than your dinner. If you are making a real change to your diet, talk to someone trained to advise you. Everything here is meant to sit alongside that kind of guidance, never to replace it.
Colophon
Leuchi is set in Fraunces by Phaedra Charles and Undercase Type, paired with Inter by Rasmus Andersson and JetBrains Mono. Photographs are mine unless noted. Recipes are tested at least three times before they appear here.
A note on privacy
Leuchi does not run third-party trackers. The newsletter signup stores only your email, in a single sentence: enough to send you the note. You can unsubscribe at the bottom of any email, no questions asked. There is no other database.