About

My name is Jillian, I’m 30, and I currently call Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada home, where I spend my winters with my cat, Chai, who likes to participate in everything I do.  For the past nine years I’ve been spending the warmer half of the year living out of a suitcase and doing avian field work– hence the birds in Birds and Baking.

I reserve the right to talk about more than just birds and/or baking!  There’s cooking, Chai, crafts, nature in general, and random things… I started this blog as a way to share more about my life with distant family and friends, but I welcome all readers.  If you’ve stumbled across my blog and have enjoyed something about it, I would love a comment!  And I’d especially love to know if you try a recipe I’ve shared.

As for about my cooking:

I am not a vegetarian but often cook like one.  When I do eat meat  I only use locally-raised, non-factory-farmed meat.  I try as much as possible to start from scratch and use minimally-processed ingredients (food, rather than food products!) to avoid potentially harmful food additives.  That said, I do make exceptions, for example, you will notice I use food colouring when making frosting.  I am trying to reduce the amount of sugar that I consume, however, it may not be apparent from my posts, because I still love to make sweets– I just try to make them for other people!  If there is a link back to an original recipe that I’ve modified, you will notice I almost always decrease the amount of sugar used.  I am also a big advocate of supporting fair trade and buying local.

All images on this blog are my own unless otherwise noted.   If you are interested in using any of my photographs, I am glad that you like them, but please ask me for permission first.

To see my bird (and other nature) photography, please visit Sparrow Images.

To contact me by email you can reach me at sparrowimages AT yahoo.ca.